Center for Accessible Neuropsychology, Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel
Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
J Neurosci. 2024 Jan 10;44(2):e1482222023. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1482-22.2023.
Humans exhibit complex mathematical skills attributed to the exceptional enlargement of neocortical regions throughout evolution. In the current work, we initiated a novel exploration of the ancient subcortical neural network essential for mathematical cognition. Using a neuropsychological approach, we report that degeneration of two subcortical structures, the cerebellum and basal ganglia, impairs performance in symbolic arithmetic. We identify distinct computational impairments in male and female participants with cerebellar degeneration (CD) or Parkinson's disease (PD). The CD group exhibited a disproportionate cost when the arithmetic sum increased, suggesting that the cerebellum is critical for iterative procedures required for calculations. The PD group showed a disproportionate cost for equations with increasing addends, suggesting that the basal ganglia are critical for chaining multiple operations. In Experiment 2, the two patient groups exhibited intact practice gains for repeated equations at odds with an alternative hypothesis that these impairments were related to memory retrieval. Notably, we discuss how the counting and chaining operations relate to cerebellar and basal ganglia function in other task domains (e.g., motor processes). Overall, we provide a novel perspective on how the cerebellum and basal ganglia contribute to symbolic arithmetic. Our studies demonstrate the constraints on the computational role of two subcortical regions in higher cognition.
人类表现出复杂的数学技能，这归因于在进化过程中大脑新皮质区域的异常扩大。在当前的工作中，我们开始探索对于数学认知至关重要的古老皮质下神经网络。我们采用神经心理学方法报告称，两个皮质下结构——小脑和基底神经节的退化会损害符号算术的表现。我们在有小脑退化 (CD) 或帕金森病 (PD) 的男性和女性参与者中发现了不同的计算损伤。小脑退化组在算术和增加时表现出不成比例的成本增加，这表明小脑对于计算所需的迭代过程至关重要。PD 组在加数增加的方程中表现出不成比例的成本增加，这表明基底神经节对于连锁多个操作至关重要。在实验 2 中，两个患者组在反复进行的方程中表现出完整的练习收益，这与替代假设相矛盾，即这些损伤与记忆检索有关。值得注意的是，我们讨论了计数和连锁操作如何与小脑和基底神经节在其他任务领域（例如，运动过程）中的功能相关。总的来说，我们提供了一个新的视角，说明了小脑和基底神经节如何为符号算术做出贡献。我们的研究表明了两个皮质下区域在高级认知中的计算作用的局限性。
