Lin Chun-Ling, Jung Melody, Wu Ying Choon, Lin Chin-Teng, She Hsiao-Ching
National Chiao-Tung University, 1001 University Rd., Hsinchu 300, Taiwan.
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2012;2012:4768-71. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2012.6347033.
The purpose of this study is to examine brain activities of participants solving mental math problems. The research investigated how problem difficulty affected the subjects' responses and electroencephalogram (EEG) in different brain regions. In general, it was found that solution latencies (SL) to the math problems increased with difficulty. The EEG results showed that across subjects, the right-central beta, left-parietal theta, left-occipital theta and alpha, right-parietal alpha and beta, medial-frontal beta and medial central theta power decreased as task difficulty increased. This study further explored the effects of problem-solving performance on the EEG. Slow solvers exhibited greater frontal theta activities in the right hemisphere, whereas an inverse pattern of hemispheric asymmetry was found in fast solvers. Furthermore, analyses of spatio-temporal brain dynamics during problem solving show progressively stronger alpha- and beta-power suppression and theta-power augmentation as subjects were reaching a solution. These findings provide a better understanding of cortical activities mediating math-based problem solving and knowledge acquisition that can ultimately benefit math learning and education.
本研究的目的是检查参与者解决心算问题时的大脑活动。该研究调查了问题难度如何影响受试者的反应以及不同脑区的脑电图（EEG）。总体而言，发现数学问题的解决潜伏期（SL）随着难度增加。脑电图结果显示，在所有受试者中，随着任务难度增加，右中央β波、左顶叶θ波、左枕叶θ波和α波、右顶叶α波和β波、内侧额叶β波和内侧中央θ波功率降低。本研究进一步探讨了解题表现对脑电图的影响。解题慢的人在右半球表现出更大的额叶θ活动，而在解题快的人中发现了相反的半球不对称模式。此外，对解题过程中脑电时空动态的分析表明，随着受试者接近答案，α波和β波功率抑制逐渐增强，θ波功率增强。这些发现有助于更好地理解介导基于数学的问题解决和知识获取的皮层活动，最终有益于数学学习和教育。
