Short-term cognitive training recapitulates hippocampal functional changes associated with one year of longitudinal skill development

Publication date: Available online 25 December 2017 Source:Trends in Neuroscience and Education Author(s): Miriam Rosenberg-Lee, Teresa Iuculano, Se Ri Bae, Jennifer Richardson, Shaozheng Qin, Dietsje Jolles, Vinod Menon A goal of developmental cognitive neuroscience is to uncover brain mechanisms underlying successful learning. While longitudinal studies capture brain changes following ‘schooling as usual’, short-term training studies can more directly link learning to brain changes. We investigated whether eight weeks of cognitive training recapitulates longitudinal changes in hippocampal engagement and connectivity. Nineteen children underwent a training program focused on improving arithmetic skills, along with fifteen children in a no-contact control group. Before and after training, or no-contact, both groups performed an arithmetic task during neuroimaging and a strategy assessment. Training increased activity in the anterior hippocampus, and gains in memory-based strategies were associated with decreases lateral fronto-parietal activity and increases hippocampus-parietal connectivity. No changes were observed in the no-contact control group. Our results demonstrate that short-term training can recapitulate long-term neurodevelopmental changes accompanying learning and identifies plasticity of hippocampal responses as a common locus of cognitive skill development in children.
Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research