Abstract
We have shown that a computer-based program that trains schoolchildren in cognitive tasks that mainly tap working memory (WM), implemented by teachers and integrated into school routine, improved cognitive and academic skills compared with an active control group. Concretely, improvements were observed in inhibition skills, non-verbal IQ, mathematics and reading skills. Here, we focus on a subsample from the overarching study who volunteered to be scanned using a resting state fMRI protocol before and 6-month after training. This sample reproduced the aforementioned behavioral effects, and brain functional connectivity changes were observed within the attentional networks (ATN), linked to improvements in inhibitory control. Findings showed stronger relationships between inhibitory control scores and functional connectivity in a right middle frontal gyrus (MFG) cluster in trained children compared to children from the control group. Seed-based analyses revealed that connectivity between the r-MFG and homolateral parietal and superior temporal areas were more strongly related to inhibitory control in trained children compared to the control group. These findings highlight the relevance of computer-based cognitive training, integrated in real-life school environments, in boosting cognitive/academic performance and brain functional connectivity.
Highlights
Sánchez-Pérez et al (2018) aimed to investigate whether computer-based cognitive training that combined tasks based on working memory (WM) and some mathematics tasks from a commercial company, could be effective to improve both cognitive and academic-related skills in school-aged children of primary education
As the majority of WM-based training effects can be accounted for in terms of attentional control, we investigated changes within the right and left attentional networks (ATN), as they were expected to underlie WM mechanisms, as well as changes between some regions of the ATNs and other brain areas involved in attention-dependent inhibitory control
Functional Connectivity Analyses We first were interested in determining whether our training program induced exclusive functional connectivity changes in the trained group, that were not observable in the control one. We addressed whether these connectivity differences could be directly related to behavioral changes. According to what it is stated in the manuscript, we started our exploration from the two Attentional Networks (ATNs), and later on we extended our analysis to observe how sensitive regions within the ATNs altered their connectivity with the rest of the brain
Summary
Sánchez-Pérez et al (2018) aimed to investigate whether computer-based cognitive training that combined tasks based on working memory (WM) and some mathematics tasks from a commercial company (for details, see Supplementary Material), could be effective to improve both cognitive and academic-related skills in school-aged children of primary education. WM-based training has been associated with improvement in some academic-related outcomes, like math grades (Holmes and Gathercole, 2014), arithmetic (BergmanNutley and Klingberg, 2014), reading (Loosli et al, 2012; Karbach et al, 2015; Söderqvist and Bergman Nutley, 2015), and vocabulary (Studer-Luethi et al, 2015). The studies targeting specific cognitive skills involved in EF (e.g., Rueda et al, 2005; Espinet et al, 2013; Bergman-Nutley and Klingberg, 2014; Gathercole et al, 2019) evidence the relevance of such kind of interventions in comparison with those based on a rather broad curricular approach (e.g., Bodrova and Leong, 2007; Traverso et al, 2015), because the implementation of the latter ones in school-based contexts often include methodological changes to the academic curricula, which may largely depend on education policy makers
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