Inter-individual, hemispheric and sex variability of brain activations during numerosity processing

Numerosity perception is a fundamental and innate cognitive function shared by both humans and many animal species. Previous research has primarily focused on exploring the spatial and functional consistency of neural activations that were associated with the processing of numerosity information. However, the inter-individual variability of brain activations of numerosity perception remains unclear. In the present study, with a large-sample functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) dataset (n = 460), we aimed to localize the functional regions related to numerosity perceptions and explore the inter-individual, hemispheric, and sex differences within these brain regions. Fifteen subject-specific activated regions, including the anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS), posterior intraparietal sulcus (pIPS), insula, inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), premotor area (PM), middle occipital gyrus (MOG) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), were delineated in each individual and then used to create a functional probabilistic atlas to quantify individual variability in brain activations of numerosity processing. Though the activation percentages of most regions were higher than 60%, the intersections of most regions across individuals were considerably lower, falling below 50%, indicating substantial variations in brain activations related to numerosity processing among individuals. Furthermore, significant hemispheric and sex differences in activation location, extent, and magnitude were also found in these regions. Most activated regions in the right hemisphere had larger activation volumes and activation magnitudes, and were located more lateral and anterior than their counterparts in the left hemisphere. In addition, in most of these regions, males displayed stronger activations than females. Our findings demonstrate large inter-individual, hemispheric, and sex differences in brain activations related to numerosity processing, and our probabilistic atlas can serve as a robust functional and spatial reference for mapping the numerosity-related neural networks.