Have you and your friends ever worked on a challenging puzzle together? If so, you probably worked together to solve it. Your brain works in a similar way. Different brain regions work together when solving a problem. The last piece in our puzzle is understanding how these brain areas work together when you calculate. As you now know, the way you solve arithmetic problems changes as you get older. Instead of mostly using procedural strategies to solve arithmetic problems, you start using fact retrieval more often. But this is not the only thing that changes. Scientists found that during this process the way the different brain areas work together changes as well. For example, while you are young, the frontal cortex has a very important role. It manages your working memory and attention, because the way you solve arithmetic problems involves multiple steps (procedural strategies). As you get older and start to use fact retrieval, the role of your frontal cortex changes. When you look at the frontal cortex using fMRI or EEG, you can see that it becomes less active as you get older.

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Go to source: https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2020.00048