Brain scans reveal a shared scale for whole numbers and fractions — Live Science
Researchers at UNICOG in France used functional magnetic resonance imaging to find that the brain uses a shared system to compare whole numbers and fractions. As Live Science reports, brain activity during this task resembled a number line: values were arranged according to their magnitude.
Experiment with numbers and fractions
The study involved 20 adults. During scanning, they compared sequentially presented whole numbers and fractions and determined whether each subsequent value was greater or smaller than the previous one.
Functional MRI tracks blood flow in the brain, which is used as an indirect indicator of its activity. The scans revealed distinct activity patterns in the anterior lower region of the parietal cortex, an area that plays an important role in number processing.
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One system for different number notations
Whole numbers and fractions were represented on a shared organized scale according to their numerical magnitude rather than the visual appearance of their notation. For example, the fraction ¼ contains the digit 4, but its value is much closer to zero. According to cognitive neuroscientist Abiot Derby, the recorded activity patterns reflected precisely this numerical relationship rather than individual digits.
Scientists already knew that whole numbers and fractions engage partly overlapping areas of the brain's number-processing network. At the same time, the mechanism for working with fractions had been studied less thoroughly. The authors noted that this is the first study of the geometry of neural representations in a task that used both whole numbers and fractions.
Participants compared fractions more slowly and made mistakes in such tasks more often than when working with whole numbers. The study was not aimed at explaining why fractions are more difficult to master or understand. Derby suggested further studying how this neural organization differs depending on age, education and mathematical training, as well as how it changes while learning fractions. The authors also suggested that the research could be extended to decimal numbers.
