This gap in knowledge is due to four reasons: First, substantially more research has been done on the neural bases of reading 4, 5 than the neural bases of math 6. Presently, it is unclear if the fascicles associated with reading are also associated with math. Interestingly, these four fascicles also intersect with the visual word form area (VWFA) 16– 18, a region in the occipito-temporal sulcus (OTS) that responds preferentially to words over other stimuli 19, 20 and is causally involved in word recognition 21. (iv) The vertical occipital fasciculus (VOF), which connects the occipital and parietal cortices and is thought to relay top-down signals from the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) to ventral occipito-temporal cortex during reading 15. Lesions to the ILF can lead to pure alexia 13, and atypical development of FA in the ILF is associated with poor reading proficiency 10, 14. (iii) The inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), which connects occipital cortex with the anterior temporal cortex. Children with dyslexia show reduced leftward asymmetry of the IFOF 12 and FA of this tract is linked to orthographic processing skill 9.
(ii) The inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), which connects the frontal and occipital cortices. Diffusion MRI measurements show that fractional anisotropy (FA) in the left AF correlates with phonological awareness 8– 10 and is reduced in dyslexics 9, 11. The fascicles of the reading network include: (i) The arcuate fasciculus (AF), which connects the frontal and temporal cortices. Research indicates that several white matter fascicles are key for reading. While a large body of research has examined both cortical regions and white matter connections of the reading network 4, 5, the cortical regions and white matter connections of the math network and how they relate to the reading network are not well understood 6, 7. For example, responses related to arithmetic fact retrieval, e.g., during adding tasks involving small numbers, such as the one used in the current study, are proposed to overlap more extensively with responses related to reading than responses induced by procedural-based computations 3. The degree to which brain activations related to math and reading overlap may also be task-dependent. These data suggest that math and reading may rely on shared neural substrates. There is also a high rate of co-morbidity between math and reading disabilities: up to 66% of children affected by dyscalculia, a math learning disability, also suffer from dyslexia, a reading learning disability 2. While they are distinct tasks, math and reading utilize several overlapping cognitive processes, including encoding of visual stimuli, verbalization, and working memory 1.
Math and reading are essential for functioning in modern society.
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