Neuromagnetic signals associated with number comparison task

Summary form only given. The question of the neural organizations of mathematical thinking is a highly debated topic. Lesion and functional imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or positron emission tomography (PET) have identified a number of brain regions involved in arithmetic processes. However, both PET and fMRI remain currently limited by the speed to observe the changes in brain activity. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) can reveal the time course of brain activity with high temporal resolution. As a first step towards understanding the neural organization of number-processing, the present study attempted to specify the brain regions involved in a simple number-processing task, number comparison task, by MEG measurement.