Mapping human temporal and parietal neuronal population activity and functional coupling during mathematical cognition.

Brain areas within the lateral parietal cortex (LPC) and ventral temporal cortex (VTC) have been shown to code for abstract quantity representations and for symbolic numerical representations, respectively. To explore the fast dynamics of activity within each region and the interaction between them, we used electrocorticography recordings from 16 neurosurgical subjects implanted with grids of electrodes over these two regions and tracked the activity within and between the regions as subjects performed three different numerical tasks. Although our results reconfirm the presence of math-selective hubs within the VTC and LPC, we report here a remarkable heterogeneity of neural responses within each region at both millimeter and millisecond scales. Moreover, we show that the heterogeneity of response profiles within each hub mirrors the distinct patterns of functional coupling between them. Our results support the existence of multiple bidirectional functional loops operating between discrete populations of neurons within the VTC and LPC during the visual processing of numerals and the performance of arithmetic functions. These findings reveal information about the dynamics of numerical processing in the brain and also provide insight into the fine-grained functional architecture and connectivity within the human brain.

Electrophysiological Responses in the Ventral Temporal Cortex During Reading of Numerals and Calculation.

Recent evidence suggests that specific neuronal populations in the ventral temporal cortex show larger electrophysiological responses to visual numerals compared with morphologically similar stimuli. This study investigates how these responses change from simple reading of numerals to the active use of numerals in an arithmetic context. We recorded high-frequency broadband (HFB) signals, a reliable measure for local neuronal population activity, while 10 epilepsy patients implanted with subdural electrodes performed separate numeral reading and calculation tasks. We found that calculation increased activity in the posterior inferior temporal gyrus (ITG) with a factor of approximately 1.5 over the first 500 ms of calculation, whereas no such increase was noted for reading numerals without calculation or reading and judging memory statements. In a second experiment conducted in 2 of the same subjects, we show that HFB responses increase in a systematic manner when the single numerals were presented successively in a calculation context: The HFB response in the ITG, to the second and third numerals (i.e., b and c in a + b = c), was approximately 1.5 times larger than the responses to the first numeral (a). These results provide electrophysiological evidence for modulation of local neuronal population responses to visual stimuli based on increasing task demands.

Simultaneous EEG/fMRI analysis of the resonance phenomena in steady-state visual evoked responses.

The stability of the steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) across trials and subjects makes them a suitable tool for the investigation of the visual system. The reproducible pattern of the frequency characteristics of SSVEPs shows a global amplitude maximum around 10 Hz and additional local maxima around 20 and 40 Hz, which have been argued to represent resonant behavior of damped neuronal oscillators. Simultaneous electroencephalogram/functional magnetic resonance imaging (EEG/fMRI) measurement allows testing of the resonance hypothesis about the frequency-selective increases in SSVEP amplitudes in human subjects, because the total synaptic activity that is represented in the fMRI-Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (fMRI-BOLD) response would not increase but get synchronized at the resonance frequency. For this purpose, 40 healthy volunteers were visually stimulated with flickering light at systematically varying frequencies between 6 and 46 Hz, and the correlations between SSVEP amplitudes and the BOLD responses were computed. The SSVEP frequency characteristics of all subjects showed 3 frequency ranges with an amplitude maximum in each of them, which roughly correspond to alpha, beta and gamma bands of the EEG. The correlation maps between BOLD responses and SSVEP amplitude changes across the different stimulation frequencies within each frequency band showed no significant correlation in the alpha range, while significant correlations were obtained in the primary visual area for the beta and gamma bands. This non-linear relationship between the surface recorded SSVEP amplitudes and the BOLD responses of the visual cortex at stimulation frequencies around the alpha band supports the view that a resonance at the tuning frequency of the thalamo-cortical alpha oscillator in the visual system is responsible for the global amplitude maximum of the SSVEP around 10 Hz. Information gained from the SSVEP/fMRI analyses in the present study might be extrapolated to the EEG/fMRI analysis of the transient event-related potentials (ERPs) in terms of expecting more reliable and consistent correlations between EEG and fMRI responses, when the analyses are carried out on evoked or induced oscillations (spectral perturbations) in separate frequency bands instead of the time-domain ERP peaks.