Acalculia: Historical development and current significance

doi:10.1016/0278-2626(83)90010-6

Brain and Cognition

Volume 2, Issue 3, July 1983, Pages 205-223

https://doi.org/10.1016/0278-2626(83)90010-6 Get rights and content

Abstract

Acalculia is a loss of calculating abilities occurring as a result of cerebral damage. This paper reviews the development of the notion of acalculia from an expected concomitant of aphasia or dementia to that of a sometimes autonomous disorder. Current evidence indicates that acalculia tends to occur particularly in lesions of the left posterior hemispheric areas.

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Cited by (56)

Transcranial Electrical Stimulation to Enhance Cognitive Abilities in the Atypically Developing Brain
2014, The Stimulated Brain: Cognitive Enhancement Using Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation
Individuals with developmental learning disabilities and behavioral disorders show structural and functional abnormalities in certain brain areas, and suffer with severe educational and career consequences. Cognitive interventions show only limited success for improvement. In order to alleviate the burden on the affected individual and the society as a whole, we need to target these neural deficits. Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES), with its large variety of methods to enhance and decrease cortical excitability, is a promising tool to achieve improvements at both brain and behavioral levels. Here we discuss the current options for stimulation and the biological effects, and how these can be applied in some examples of cognitive and behavioral deficits. We also note the importance of safety guidelines and careful assessment in preclinical studies, as well as in clinical pediatric populations, as the evidence in these cases is currently minimal. Overall, we suggest that tES can have the capacity to redirect atypical brain development and have a positive impact on educational difficulties. Future developments in the optimization of training and stimulation parameters might allow us to remove the neural brakes on learning in a variety of child developmental disorders.
Chapter 17 Acalculia
2008, Handbook of Clinical Neurology
Citation Excerpt :
The most prominent was the tripartite grouping by Hécaen et al. (1961) discerning ‘anarithmetia’ (anarithmétie) as the primary form and two secondary forms ‘alexia and agraphia for digits and numbers’ as well as ‘spatial acalculia.’ Boller and Grafman (1983) differentiated calculation problems proper further into impaired knowledge and use of mathematical facts as compared to problems with conceptual knowledge of mathematical concepts and operations. Acalculia has to be distinguished from developmental dyscalculia, designating a specific learning difficulty about numbers and arithmetic in childhood, resulting in a failure to achieve adequate proficiency in arithmetic despite normal intelligence, scholastic opportunity, emotional stability, and sufficient motivation (Shalev and Gross-Tsur, 2001; Butterworth, 2005).
The loss or impairment of the ability to carry out calculation tasks and to handle numbers consequent to acquired brain pathology is called acalculia. Deficits of other cognitive functions like attention, short or long-term memory, language, reading, writing, as well as spatial abilities lead to specific problems in handling numbers or arithmetic. The last two decades have witnessed substantial theoretical and empirical advances in delineating and understanding the multifaceted nature of numerical cognition. The neuropsychological analysis of number processing and calculation disturbances has become more refined with the availability of more articulated processing models, diagnostic procedures, and more readily available experimental paradigms. More refined diagnostic methods reveal the high frequency of more or less subtle impairments both in acquired focal and degenerating brain pathology. Progress is also expected for the development of training and therapy methods that go beyond pure drill for the procedural (re-)learning of calculation routines, e.g., fostering conceptual understanding. It is expected that an interest in computational modeling of numerical cognition will grow such that more refined and comprehensive models will be put forward based on the recent advances for modeling smaller numbers with semantic (e.g., numerosity code for representing cardinal meaning) and symbolic representations as well as more elementary number processing and arithmetic tasks.
Why your "head is in the clouds" during thinking: The relationship between cognition and upper space
2005, Acta Psychologica
Citation Excerpt :
However, we did not formally screen for handedness among our subjects and did not differentiate our questions clearly into verbal or non-verbal categories, which may be important in obtaining significant lateral eye biases (Galluscio & Paradzinski, 1995; Kinsbourne, 1972). It should be noted that Kinsbourne (1972) also did not observe significant lateral biases during his numerical tasks, even though mental arithmetic is believed to involve mainly left-hemispheric operations (see Boller & Grafman, 1983). Blink rate also proved sensitive to the type of task performed, but only weakly in comparison to the U–D measure.
Higher-order cognition in humans has not generally been viewed as closely entwined with the brain mechanisms mediating more basic perceptual–motor interactions in 3-D space. However, recent findings suggest that perceptual and oculomotor mechanisms that are biased toward the upper field (which disproportionately represents radially distant space) are activated during complex mental operations, ranging from semantic processing to mental arithmetic and memory search. The particularly close affinity with upward conjugate eye deviations––further confirmed in a study of 24 schoolchildren who responded to various mental questions and demands––suggests that active, abstract thinking in humans may have expropriated the focal-extrapersonal brain systems involved in saccadic exploration of the distant environment in other primates.
A functional MRI study of simple arithmetic - A comparison between children and adults
2004, Cognitive Brain Research
The purpose of this study was to examine brain areas involved in simple arithmetic, and to compare these areas between adults and children. Eight children (four girls and four boys; age, 9–14 years) and eight adults (four women and four men; age, 40–49 years) were subjected to this study. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed during mental calculation of addition, subtraction, and multiplication of single digits. In each group, the left middle frontal, bilateral inferior temporal and bilateral lateral occipital cortices were activated during each task. The adult group showed activation of the right frontal cortex during addition and multiplication tasks, but the children group did not. Activation of the intraparietal cortex was observed in the adult group during each task. Although, activation patterns were slightly different among tasks, as well as between groups, only a small number of areas showed statistically significant differences. The results indicate that cortical networks involved in simple arithmetic are similar among arithmetic operations, and may not show significant changes in the structure during the second decade of life.
The mental number line and the human angular gyrus
2001, NeuroImage
To investigate the hemispheric organization of a language-independent spatial representation of number magnitude in the human brain we applied focal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to the right or left angular gyrus while subjects performed a number comparison task with numbers between 31 and 99. Repetitive TMS over the angular gyrus disrupted performance of a visuospatial search task, and rTMS at the same site disrupted organization of the putative “number line.” In some cases the pattern of disruption caused by angular gyrus rTMS suggested that this area normally mediates a spatial representation of number. The effect of angular gyrus rTMS on the number line task was specific. rTMS had no disruptive effect when delivered over another parietal region, the supramarginal gyrus, in either the left or the right hemisphere.
The calculating brain: An fMRI study
2000, Neuropsychologia
To explore brain areas involved in basic numerical computation, functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) scanning was performed on college students during performance of three tasks; simple arithmetic, numerical magnitude judgment, and a perceptual-motor control task. For the arithmetic relative to the other tasks, results for all eight subjects revealed bilateral activation in Brodmann’s area 44, in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (areas 9 and 10), in inferior and superior parietal areas, and in lingual and fusiform gyri. Activation was stronger on the left for all subjects, but only at Brodmann’s area 44 and the parietal cortices. No activation was observed in the arithmetic task in several other areas previously implicated for arithmetic, including the angular and supramarginal gyri and the basal ganglia. In fact, angular and supramarginal gyri were significantly deactivated by the verification task relative to both the magnitude judgment and control tasks for every subject. Areas activated by the magnitude task relative to the control were more variable, but in five subjects included bilateral inferior parietal cortex. These results confirm some existing hypotheses regarding the neural basis of numerical processes, invite revision of others, and suggest productive lines for future investigation.

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^☆: This research project was supported in part by funds of the Research and Development Service of the Veterans Administration and by a National Institutes of Health (National Institute of Aging) Program Grant PO1 AG-03705-01.

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Acalculia: Historical development and current significance☆

Abstract

Cortex

Cortex

Monatschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie

Persistances de possibilités de calcul élémentaire au cours des aphasies massives

Revue Neurologique

Verbal paraphasia as a cause of calculation disturbances

Archives of Neurology

The fiction of the “Gerstmann syndrome”

Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry

Ueber Rechenstörungen bei Herderkrankungen des Grosshirns

Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten

L'évaluation des fonctions neuropsychologiques: Examen standard de l'unité de recherches neuropsychologiques et neurolinguistiques (U. 111) I.N.S.E.R.M.

Revue de Psychologie Appliquée

The neurology of language

Brain

Perte de la Parole

Bulletin de la Société d'Anthropologie

The dawn of European civilization

Dyscalculia

Archives of Neurology

Etude de la sémiologie des troubles de calcul observés aú cours des lésions corticales

Acta Neurologica Belgica

Versuch einer psychologischen Analyse des Parietalsyndroms

Monatschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie

Störung der Zeitauffassung, der räumlichen Orientierung, des Zeichnens und des Rechnens bei einem Hirnverletzten

Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie

Is human memory obsolete?

American Scientist

Visualized numerals

Nature (London)

Visualized numerals

Nature (London)

Visualized numerals

Nature (London)

Calculation disturbances in adults with focal hemispheric damage

Cortex

The acalculias

Acalculia

Brain

Disorders in the use of semiotic systems

Logos

Stonehenge physics

Physics Today

Clinical symptomatology in right and left hemispheric lesions

Etude anatomo-clinique de 280 cas de lésions rétro-rolandiques unilatérales des hémisphères cérébraux

Encéphale