Only a small amount of studies have looked at the structural neural correlates of children's arithmetic. Furthermore, these studies mainly implemented voxel-based morphometry, which only takes the volume of regions into account, without looking at other structural properties. The current study aimed to contribute knowledge on which brain regions are important for children's arithmetic on a structural level, by not only implementing voxel-based morphometry, but also cortical complexity analyses, based on the fractal dimension index. This complexity measure describes a characteristic of surface shape. Data of 43 typically developing 9-10 year-olds were analyzed. All children were asked to take part in two test sessions: behavioral data collection and MRI data acquisition. For data analysis, mean values for volume and cortical complexity were estimated within regions of interest (ROIs) and extracted for further analysis. The selected ROIs were based on regions found to be related to children's mathematical abilities in previous research. Results point towards associations between arithmetic fluency and the volume of the right fusiform gyrus, as well as the cortical complexity of the left postcentral gyrus, right insular sulcus, and left lateral orbital sulcus. Remarkably, no significant associations were observed between the children's arithmetic fluency and the volume or cortical complexity of typically arithmetic-associated parietal regions, such as the superior parietal lobe, intraparietal sulcus, or angular gyrus. Accordingly, the current study highlights the importance of structural characteristics of brain regions other than these typically arithmetic-associated parietal regions for children's arithmetic fluency.

中文翻译：

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灰质体积和皮层复杂性与儿童算术流利度的个体差异之间的关系。

只有很少的研究研究了儿童算术的结构神经相关性。此外，这些研究主要实现了基于体素的形态计量学，该形态计量学仅考虑了区域的体积，而没有考虑其他结构特性。当前的研究旨在不仅通过实施基于体素的形态计量学，而且还基于分形维数指数进行皮层复杂性分析，以提供关于哪些脑区域对于儿童的算术在结构水平上重要的知识。这种复杂性度量描述了表面形状的特征。分析了43名典型的9-10岁儿童的数据。所有儿童均被要求参加两个测试环节：行为数据收集和MRI数据采集。对于数据分析，在感兴趣区域（ROI）内估计体积和皮质复杂性的平均值，并提取出来以进行进一步分析。选择的投资回报率是基于先前研究中与孩子的数学能力有关的区域。结果表明算术流利度与右梭状回的体积以及左中后回，右岛沟和左眼眶沟的皮质复杂性之间存在关联。值得注意的是，在儿童的算术流利度与通常与算术相关的顶区，例如上顶叶，顶内沟或角回等的体积或皮质复杂性之间未发现显着关联。因此，