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Abstract
Only a small amount of studies have looked at the structural neural correlates of
children’s arithmetic. Furthermore, these studies mainly implemented voxel-based morphometry,
which only takes the volume of regions into account, without looking at other structural
properties. The current study aimed to contribute knowledge on which brain regions
are important for children’s arithmetic on a structural level, by not only implementing
voxel-based morphometry, but also cortical complexity analyses, based on the fractal
dimension index. This complexity measure describes a characteristic of surface shape.
Data of 43 typically developing 9-10 year-olds were analyzed. All children were asked
to take part in two test sessions: behavioral data collection and MRI data acquisition.
For data analysis, mean values for volume and cortical complexity were estimated within
regions of interest (ROIs) and extracted for further analysis. The selected ROIs were
based on regions found to be related to children’s mathematical abilities in previous
research. Results point towards associations between arithmetic fluency and the volume
of the right fusiform gyrus, as well as the cortical complexity of the left postcentral
gyrus, right insular sulcus, and left lateral orbital sulcus. Remarkably, no significant
associations were observed between the children’s arithmetic fluency and the volume
or cortical complexity of typically arithmetic-associated parietal regions, such as
the superior parietal lobe, intraparietal sulcus, or angular gyrus. Accordingly, the
current study highlights the importance of structural characteristics of brain regions
other than these typically arithmetic-associated parietal regions for children’s arithmetic
fluency.