Influence of mental abacus calculation practice on mental arithmetic in children: a fMRI study

Objective To investigate the influence of mental abacus calculation practice on mental arithmetic in children with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Methods Twelve children who had practiced mental abacus calculation for 3 years and 12 untrained children (The two groups were matched in terms of age, handedness and education) underwent fMRI during mental calculation tasks. The related behavior data were recorded at the same time. All data were analyzed with statistical parametric mapping 2. Results The calculation accuracy was significantly higher [(95.00±7.16)% vs.(74.26±16.07)%, t=-4.084, P0.01]; and the reaction time was significantly shorter [(597.91±124.05) ms vs. (770.07± 148.54) ms, t=3.082, P0.01] in trained group than untrained group. The extent and magnitude of the activated areas were significantly increased in the untrained group compared with the trained group. The activated areas mainly localized in the frontal and parietal lobes in untrained group, while the brain activated areas were few and mainly localized in occipital and parietal lobes in the trained group. Conclusion Mental abacus calculation can enhance the information processing in some brain areas, and improve the utilization efficiency of neural resources.