Speed of mental addition in an abacus expert, estimated by eye movements and neural activities.

A grand expert of abacus looked at a display on which three-digit numbers were aligned vertically with constant spacing, for sequentially adding the numbers mentally. His eye regularly moved downward by alternating a fixation to one of the numbers with a saccade to another below it, with the average period of the alternations at 271 msec. His magnetoencephalogram averaged with respect to start of the fixations revealed activity in the right superior parietal cortex. This finding not only supported the previous view that abacus experts mentally calculate by manipulating spatial representations of numbers, but also showed that the calculation was synchronized with the periodic eye movements. Thus, each process of the mental sequential addition, which starts with visual recognition of an addend, was estimated to require less than 271 msec. on average.