Early occipital injury affects numerosity counting but not simple arithmetic

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of early occipital injury on the development of counting and simple arithmetic abilities in an occipital epileptic patient. This patient had obvious softening lesions in the bilateral occipital regions due to viral encephalitis at the age of 1.5 years. Results showed that she could perform subitizing and simple arithmetic very well, but could not perform numerosity counting tasks. These results suggest that the occipital cortex plays an important role in the development of numerosity counting skills, but not in the development of subitizing and simple arithmetic.

Keywords:

• occipital cortex
• counting
• numerical processing
• language processing
• early brain injury

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China [grant number 2014CB846100]; the Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 31271187], [grant number 31221003]; another funder Ministry of Education of the PRC [grant number mjzxyb1412].