fMRI Evidence of Magnitude Manipulation during Numerical Order Processing in Congenitally Deaf Signers

Abstract

Congenital deafness is often compensated by early sign language use leading to typical language development with corresponding neural underpinnings. However, deaf individuals are frequently reported to have poorer numerical abilities than hearing individuals and it is not known whether the underlying neuronal networks differ between groups. In the present study, adult deaf signers and hearing nonsigners performed a digit and letter order tasks, during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found the neuronal networks recruited in the two tasks to be generally similar across groups, with significant activation in the dorsal visual stream for the letter order task, suggesting letter identification and position encoding. For the digit order task, no significant activation was found for either of the two groups. Region of interest analyses on parietal numerical processing regions revealed different patterns of activation across groups. Importantly, deaf signers showed significant activation in the right horizontal portion of the intraparietal sulcus for the digit order task, suggesting engagement of magnitude manipulation during numerical order processing in this group.