Happy Pi Day!

Elizabeth and Juliet love celebrating Pi Day, 3/14! (Pi is that magical number, 3.14, that describes the cicumference:diameter ratio of a circle).

In celebration of this Pi Day, we thought we’d take a moment to talk about how the brain stores math facts. This ability involves one of our favorite brain regions - the hippocampus!

When you are first learning math facts, like 3+6=9, or 4-1=3, you are using your prefrontal cortex to actively solve for those answers. (The prefrontal cortex sits just behind your forehead, and often acts like the conductor of your train of thoughts). You might be visualizing a number line, or using your fingers to count. But over time, and with practice, you will begin to memorize these math facts — you will “just know” that 3+6=9. This happens because, with practice, your hippocampus stores these math facts as a memory!

When your hippocampus stores these math facts, that frees your prefrontal cortex to do other math tasks. So, once your hippocampus has stored those initial math facts, your prefrontal cortex can help you to figure out the answer to more complicated problems, like (3+6) x (4-1) = ?