Comparison of self-paced and fixed stimulus presentation times in an fMRI study on exact, non-symbolic addition in 6 to 12 year old children

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Event Abstract Back to Event Comparison of self-paced and fixed stimulus presentation times in an fMRI study on exact, non-symbolic addition in 6 to 12 year old children Helga Krinzinger1*, Jan W. Koten2, Kerstin Konrad1 and Klaus Willmes2 1 RWTH Aachen University, Section Child Neuropsychology, Medical Faculty, Germany 2 RWTH Aachen University, Section Neuropsychology, Medical Faculty, Germany Fixed stimulus presentation times pose several methodological problems for developmental fMRI studies in which response time differences may cause cognitively and/or motivationally driven confounds in neural activation patterns. This obstacle may be avoided by self-paced study designs. Yet, sensitivity and reliability of self-paced stimulus presentation for higher cognitive fMRI studies are largely understudied. Therefore, we compared reliability, extent of detected neural activation, and number of children showing consistent activation per vertex in a fixed and in a self-paced design variant of an exact, non-symbolic addition paradigm in a sample of 10 children aged 6-12 years. We found that the self-paced design was clearly superior in reliability compared to the fixed design. Furthermore, the anterior IPS (related to number-specific cognitive processing) was only found to be significantly activated when using the self-paced, but not the fixed design both on the group activation level as well as using relative frequency of brain activation analyses. This means that sensitivity of the self-paced designs is better than fixed designs using the same number of items with an optimally chosen number of blocks. Yet, number of blocks influenced sensitivity of results, but not reliability. Overall we conclude that self-paced designs are a valid option for developmental fMRI studies investigating higher cognitive functions. Conference: EARLI SIG22 - Neuroscience and Education, Zurich, Switzerland, 3 Jun - 5 Jun, 2010. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Arithmetic and higher-order mathematics Citation: Krinzinger H, Koten JW, Konrad K and Willmes K (2010). Comparison of self-paced and fixed stimulus presentation times in an fMRI study on exact, non-symbolic addition in 6 to 12 year old children. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: EARLI SIG22 - Neuroscience and Education. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.11.00057 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 31 May 2010; Published Online: 31 May 2010. * Correspondence: Helga Krinzinger, RWTH Aachen University, Section Child Neuropsychology, Medical Faculty, Aachen, Germany, hkrinzinger@ukaachen.de Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Helga Krinzinger Jan W Koten Kerstin Konrad Klaus Willmes Google Helga Krinzinger Jan W Koten Kerstin Konrad Klaus Willmes Google Scholar Helga Krinzinger Jan W Koten Kerstin Konrad Klaus Willmes PubMed Helga Krinzinger Jan W Koten Kerstin Konrad Klaus Willmes Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.