Have you ever wondered how the brain performs addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division?

A new study from Carnegie Mellon University (hereinafter referred to as CMU) reveals brain imaging of changes in brain activation levels when dealing with complex math problems.

For the first time, four neural stages of the brain have been identified when dealing with math problems.

The study used two different brain imaging devices, one to capture the real activity of neurons in the brain and the other to capture changes in neural patterns as participants worked out math problems.

This is the first time that the mental stages of brain activity have been recorded in such detail, and the findings could provide a deeper understanding of how the brain works than simply adding up levels of neuronal activity.

"Until now, brain processing when solving math problems has been a mystery to us," said John Anderson from CMU, first author of the study.

"Now, as soon as a student sits down to think about a math problem, we can learn what they are thinking about every second."

Anderson and his team discovered four distinct phases: coding (reading and understanding the problem), planning (hunting for how to solve it), solving (crunching numbers), and answering (writing or typing the correct answer).

Anderson said that if we can better understand how students solve math problems, then we can use that to improve our teaching methods.

Eighty students participated in the study. As the participants worked out the math problems, the research team divided each brain scan imaging into exactly four different processes.

Although the math problems were not difficult, participants sometimes used equations and symbols to emphasize parts of the coding process.

In other cases, the research team presented math problems that required more planning so that the individual cognitive processes could be more clearly distinguished.

Anderson said: "Teachers usually judge students' mastery by focusing only on the time it takes them to complete math problems, and the method proposed in this study allows teachers to know the time they spend in each processing stage. "

In the past, neuroimaging techniques have presented us with differences in cognitive processing, but the purpose of this study was to connect these processes in a certain order.

The study is part of the work of the UNIFIED theory of cognition, which suggests that all mental processing has the same basis.

Anderson further stated that to gain a deeper understanding, we may need more advanced brain imaging equipment.