Business Insider put out a fascinating story with pictures of scans showing what happens in the brain when solving a math problem. They indicated four distinct steps: encoding (reading and understanding the problem), planning (strategizing how to tackle the problem), solving (performing the math), and responding (typing or writing the answer)
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-brains-solve-math-problems-2016-8
The steps themselves should come as no surprise to anyone who has taught math. Our lead instructor, Elayn Martin-Gay, has been teaching these steps in our award-winning videos for over 20 years. Science is just starting to describe what great teachers have known for decades and probably centuries. In teaching math, we add a fifth important step of checking the answer. I would like to see what the brain looks like during that step.