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Neuroscientific investigator of high mathematical ability: an interview with Michael W. O'Boyle.

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Michael W. O'Boyle, PhD, is professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Texas Tech University, and Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology and Neuroscience, School of Medicine, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. His research has been pushing back the frontiers of giftedness by revealing intriguing connections between neuroscientific investigations and mathematical high ability.

Kalbfleisch: In light of your research, please describe the difference between the brain of a mathematically gifted adolescent and one of more "average" math ability.

O'Boyle: There are several findings from my research that inform us about the characteristics of the mathematically gifted brain. First, there is enhanced right hemisphere (RH) functioning during information processing that may reflect the fact that math-gifted adolescents rely heavily on imagery-based memory representations during thinking. And importantly, it just so happens that these image-based representations are particularly useful when it comes to the mastery of high-level mathematics and thus are potential precursors to mathematical giftedness. A second characteristic that is extremely important for math giftedness comes from research in which we were able to show enhanced efficiency and cooperation between the hemispheres when exchanging information. In our study, average-math-ability children were slower and made more mistakes when engaged in interhemispheric transfer of information (i.e., when comparing the identity of letters presented simultaneously, one to each visual field), while the math-gifted were actually faster and equally accurate when making these cross-hemisphere comparisons, thus failing to demonstrate the usual processing penalties or costs normally associated with interhemispheric transfer of information. Finally, current neuroimaging work from my lab indicates that the overall amount of brain activation found in the math-gifted when performing various tasks (e.g., mental rotation) is actually several times greater than that of their average-ability classmates, which is suggestive of enhanced processing resources. This enhanced brain activation is distinctly bilateral in nature, a pattern that stands in contrast to those of average math ability who tend to rely on the lateralized and specialized contributions of one hemisphere or the other.

Kalbfleisch: Can you tell us something about the studies that led you to these conclusions about enhanced development and reliance on the right hemisphere during information processing in the math-gifted brain ?

O'Boyle: As a result of a series of experiments that I have done in collaboration with various colleagues over the last 10 or 12 years, we have arrived at the conclusion that the specialized visuospatial capacities of the right hemisphere of the math-gifted brain are particularly well developed and relied upon during all types of information processing, even for the analysis of stimuli for which it may not be particularly well suited. In a study using a dichotic listening task in which two syllables are presented, one to each ear simultaneously, and the subject's task is to identify which two syllables were heard, average-math-ability children (and adults) produced a prototypic right ear/left hemisphere advantage (i.e., syllables that are projected directly to the verbally specialized left hemisphere are more efficiently processed and better recognized than those projected to the nonlinguistic left ear/right hemisphere. Note that in this task, inputs to the right hemisphere are thought to be shuttled to the left hemisphere for verbal processing, an interhemispheric transfer of information that usually results in a breakdown in performance. However, in the aforementioned study, math-gifted children processed syllables equally well with either ear/hemisphere suggesting enhanced right-hemisphere functioning even for the processing of linguistic (verbal) inputs. Alternatively, their right hemisphere also may be particularly efficient in passing information from the right to the left hemisphere (probably via...

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