Brian Wandell, Ph.D. Psychology Department Stanford University - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Brian Wandell, Ph.D. Psychology Department Stanford University

Purpose • Explain measurements of developing brain connections • Reading and Math Examples • I am here for discussion – Is anything I can do that is useful to you?

Courtesy Professor Ugur Ture Signals between widely separated gray matter regions are carried by long fibers called white matter

Scientists recently learned how to estimate these fibers in the living human brain using magnetic resonance methods: Diffusion tensor Diffusion tensor imaging, or imaging, or Diffusion Diffusion spectrum spectrum Johns Hopkins is a leader in this technology imaging imaging

White matter White matter The properties of Gray matter certain fibers are correlated with specific cognitive abilities. Ventricle Ventricle For example, certain Fibers Corpus Corpus callosum callosum fibers in the corpus callosum are correlated with phonological decoding

Diffusivity in S P r(45) ~ 0.58 T T callosum that O p < 0.001 projects to temporal lobes correlates with sounding out words (Dougherty et al., PNAS, 2007) Reading-related standard scores

Music and Reading The Dana Foundation supported us to examine the relationship between arts training and reading. Music provided the strongest correlation between arts training and reading. The music training explains 16% of the variance in children’s The horizontal axis shows lifetime hours of music scores. training; the vertical axis shows the improvement in reading fluency between years 3 and years 1.

Michal Ben-Shachar Jessica Tsang Green shoots Visual arts and Math We incidentally discovered that visual art experience is correlated with math skills. The horizontal axis shows a weekly average of hours spent on visual art activity in school (year 1). The vertical axis shows a measure of math skill. The correlation explains 10% of the variance in children’s scores.

A B All fibers in the left hemisphere Cantlon et al., PLOS Bio, 2006

A Fibers connecting putative math regions (Triple-code model, Dehaene, Spelke and others) anterior superior longitudinal fasciculus (aSLF)

r(25) 0.49, p < 0.02 Explains about 25% of the variance.

No correlation for adjacent track (arcuate)

The correlation is specific to this section of the track Left Right

Conclusions • Connections (and other aspects of anatomy) can be measured at young ages (easier than fMRI) • Healthy development of these connections is essential for cognition • How can we work together?

Robert Dougherty Visual fields and pRFs Alyssa Brewer, UC Irvine Alex Wade, Smith-Kettlewell Serge Dumoulin, Helmholtz Institute Hiroshi Horiguchi, Stanford Kaoru Amano, Tokyo University Jon Winawer, Stanford Reading and Math Michal Ben-Shachar, Bar-Ilan, Tel-Aviv Adult cortical plasticity Jessica Tsang, Stanford Gayle Deutsch, Stanford Yoichiro Masuda, Jikkei Hospital, Tokyo Stelios Smirnakis, Baylor College of Medicine Diffusion-methods and qMRI Alyssa Brewer, UC Irvine Anthony Sherbondy, IBM, Almaden Satoshi Nakadomari, Jikkei Hospital, Tokyo Nikola Stikov, Stanford Netta Levin, Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem Aviv Mezer, Stanford Hiroshi Horiguchi, Stanford Nikos Logothetis, Tuebingen We gratefully acknowledge support from : NIH, DARPA, IBM, Dana Foundation, Schwab Foundation, Microsoft Co.