Daniel Ansari is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Graduate Program at The University of Western Ontario. He also holds the Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.
One line of his research focuses on working out which brain regions are involved in our ability to calculate. How is brain activation during calculation affected by the particular arithmetic operation being performed (e.g. do different brain regions subserve subtraction and multiplication)? And, does the type of problem-solving strategy result in the use of different brain networks? Together with Dr. Roland Grabner from the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, he is looking for answers to these questions in search for a better understanding of how the brain enables us to become mathematically fluent.
Daniel Ansari hopes that his analyses of the relationships between individual differences in the strength of cortical white matter pathways and brain activity may help to further constrain theories about their roles in the domain of calculation -- and will add to our understanding of neural networks underlying this and other human abilities.