Brain responses while watching the educational TV show predict their verbal and math abilities
FRIDAY, Jan. 4 (HealthDay News) -- The responses of children's brains while they watch the educational television show "Sesame Street" can predict their verbal and mathematical abilities, according to a study published online Jan. 3 in PLOS Biology.
Jessica F. Cantlon, Ph.D., and Rosa Li, from the University of Rochester in New York, performed functional magnetic resonance imaging on 27 children (mean age, 7.1 years) and 20 adults (mean age, 20.7 years) while they watched a 20-minute video of clips from "Sesame Street." The imaging produced 609 time points as part of a neural time series, which were used to derive maps of neural maturity.
The researchers found that the children's mathematical abilities were predicted by neural maturity in the intraparietal sulcus, an area known to be important for basic numerical cognition. In contrast, the children's verbal abilities were predicted by neural maturity in Broca's area, an area known to be important for language.
"Our data show that children's neural responses while watching complex real-world stimuli predict their cognitive abilities in a content-specific manner," Cantlon and Li conclude. "This more ecologically natural paradigm, combined with the novel measure of 'neural maturity,' provides a new method for studying real world mathematics development in the brain."
Abstract
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