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

Publication date: March 2018Source: Trends in Neuroscience and Education, Volume 10Author(s): Miriam Rosenberg-Lee, Teresa Iuculano, Se Ri Bae, Jennifer Richardson, Shaozheng Qin, Dietsje Jolles, Vinod MenonAbstractA 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 decreased lateral fronto-parietal activity and increased 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 - July 10, 2018 Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research