They found that when eight-to-thirteen-year-olds were given complex subtraction problems, the somatosensory finger area lit up, even though the students did not use their fingers.4 Remarkably, we “see” a representation of our fingers in our brains even when we do not use fingers in a calculation. This finger-representation area was, according to their study, also engaged to a greater extent with more complex problems that involved higher numbers and more manipulation.
