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Traditionally, it has been thought that words and language are typically processed by the left hemisphere of the brain, even as the right part of the brain is responsible for numerical reasoning. But new research by a team from the University of Jena shows that one part of the brain is responsible for the visual processing of numbers, which is active in both hemispheres.

This area is known as the "visual number form area" (NFA) and was visualised with high-resolution magnetic resonance recordings. They documented the levels of activity in this region, which is usually not easily accessible in healthy subjects.

Researchers gave the subjects numbers, letters and pictures of daily objects, even as they recorded the activity of the brain with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Hence, they could identify the NFA, situated in a tiny region on the "underside of the left and right temporal lobes" through the high level of activity in the area that was seen during the presentation of numbers, compared to other letters and images.

"This region has been a kind of blind spot in the human brain until now," Mareike Grotheer, coauthor of the study, said in a press release.

It is because the region is "hidden by bone, air and the acoustic meatus, meaning previous MRI scans had difficulty picking it up," according to HNGN.

Scientists thus employed a high-performance 3 Tesla MRI scanner that permitted them to capture three-dimensional images of their brains at a high spatial resolution, so that white noise could be eliminated and surrounding structures could be avoided.

The findings were published in the Jan. 6,2016 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.