Arithmetic in the Child and Adult Brain Page 1 of 23 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2014. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy ). Subscriber: Oxford University Press - Master Gratis Access; date: 31 July 2014 Subject: Psychology, Developmental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology Online Publication Date: Jul 2014 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199642342.013.041 Arithmetic in the Child and Adult Brain Vinod Menon The Oxford Handbook of Mathematical Cognition (Forthcoming) Edited by Roi Cohen Kadosh and Ann Dowker Oxford Handbooks Online Abstract and Keywords This review examines brain and cognitive processes involved in arithmetic. I take a distinctly developmental perspective because neither the cognitive nor the brain processes involved in arithmetic can be adequately understood outside the framework of how developmental processes unfold. I review four basic neurocognitive processes involved in arithmetic, highlighting (1) the role of core dorsal parietal and ventral temporal-occipital cortex systems that form basic building blocks from which number form and quantity representations are constructed in the brain; (2) procedural and working memory systems anchored in the basal ganglia and frontoparietal circuits, which create short-term representations that allow manipulation of multiple discrete quantities over several seconds; (3) episodic and semantic memory systems anchored in the medial and lateral temporal cortex that play an important role in long-term memory formation and generalization beyond individual problem attributes; and (4) prefrontal cortex control processes that guide allocation of attention resources and retrieval of facts from memory in the service of goal-directed problem solving. Next I examine arithmetic in the developing brain, first focusing on studies comparing arithmetic in children and adults, and then on studies examining development in children during critical stages of skill acquisition. I highlight neurodevelopmental models that go beyond parietal cortex regions involved in number processing, and demonstrate that brain systems and circuits in the developing child brain are clearly not the same as those seen in more mature adult brains sculpted by years of learning. The implications of these findings for a more comprehensive view of the neural basis of arithmetic in both children and adults are discussed. Keywords: arithmetic, neurodevelopment, long-term memory, quantity representations, memory, brain network, skill acquisition Introduction Arithmetic skills build on a core number knowledge system for representing numerical quantity using abstract symbols that is typically in place by the age of 5 (Barth, La Mont, Lipton, & Spelke, 2005). This is as true of brain processes as it is of cognitive processes described in previous chapters. In addition to core number processing systems in the parietal and inferior temporal cortex (Ansari, 2008), arithmetic also involves distributed brain systems mediating different memory processes, including working, episodic, and sematic memories, as well as cognitive control and decision making. With practice, learning, and development, these systems together help to build rich visuospatial, phonological, and mnemonic representations that result in proficiencies that are a hallmark of human cognition. In this chapter I use a cognitive neuroscience approach to examine brain systems involved in arithmetic problem solving, highlighting their developmental origins. This review takes a distinctly developmental perspective, because neither the cognitive nor the brain processes involved in arithmetic can be adequately understood outside the framework of how ontogenetic processes unfold. This chapter first highlights major findings related to key cognitive