Prep Talk

Left Brain? Right Brain? New Study Shows Both Sides of the Brain Are Used for Math

Posted February 1st, 2016

Remember the old adage that left-brained people are good at logic and language, and right-brained people are more creative and artistic? Well, like many old adages, it might be somewhat exaggerated.

While it has long been known that different areas of the brain process different activities, it has recently been discovered that both sides of our brains process numbers. In fact, very few of the brains functions and neural pathways are confined to the right or left hemisphere.

A recent study by neuroscientists from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Jena University Hospital in Germany have revealed a new region of the brain that has been hidden to researchers until now. This region, known as the “visual number form area,” or NFA, was undetectable with traditional MRI scans because of its location; hidden under the ear and the acoustic meatus. This small area is surrounded by bone and air, making it a blind spot in the brain that couldn’t be studied until now.

Using a new, high-performance 3 tesla MRI scanner, the scientists were able to record three-dimensional images of the brains of test subjects as they were asked to visualize numbers, letters and pictures of everyday objects. These 3-D MRI scans clearly identify activity in this “new” region of the brain.

Scientists in the study say that visual processing of numbers isn’t the only thing that takes place in the NFA. The new MRI scans show that faces and objects are processed there as well.

Will this new discovery have an impact on how we teach mathematics? Only time will tell, but it’s exciting to learn about the hidden powers (and potential) of the human brain. New discoveries are occurring every day—who knows what will be revealed next?