When solving 22-7 is much more difficult than 99-12
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Paola Marangolo; Hans J. Markowitsch; Antonio Carota; Pasquale Calabrese
- Source
- Subject
- Male
Dyscalculia
Functional Laterality
Thalamic Diseases
Task (project management)
Developmental psychology
Executive Function
Cognition
Mental Processes
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Memory
Reaction Time
medicine
Humans
Attention
Borrowing
Problem Solving
Aged
Subtraction
Brain
Calculation
medicine.disease
Stroop Test
Neurology (clinical)
Capsular-thalamic stroke
Intracranial Hemorrhages
Mathematics
Psychomotor Performance
Stroop effect
Cognitive psychology
- Language
- English
We describe the case of a 69-year-old professor of mathematics (GV) who was examined 2 years after left-hemispheric capsular-thalamic haemorrhage. GV showed disproportionate impairment in subtractions requiring borrowing (22 - 7). For large subtraction problems without borrowing (99 - 12) performance was almost flawless. Subtractions with borrowing mostly relied on inadequate attempts to invert subtractions into the corresponding additions (22 - 7 = x as 7 + x = 22). The hypothesis is advanced that difficulty in the inhibitory components of attention tasks (Stroop test, go-no-go task) might be the responsible factor of his calculation impairment. A deficit in subtractions with borrowing might be related to left-hemispheric damage involving thalamo-cortical connections.