Frontoparietal white matter diffusion properties predict mental arithmetic skills in children

Functional MRI studies of mental arithmetic consistently report blood oxygen level-dependent signals in the parietal and frontal regions. We tested whether white matter pathways connecting these regions are related to mental arithmetic ability by using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to measure these...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2009-12, Vol.106 (52), p.22546-22551
Main Authors: Tsang, Jessica M, Dougherty, Robert F, Deutsch, Gayle K, Wandell, Brian A, Ben-Shachar, Michal
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Addition
Adolescent
Anatomy
Anisotropy
Approximation
Arithmetic
Biological Sciences
Brain
Brain Mapping
Child
Children & youth
Cognition & reasoning
Cognition - physiology
Correlation analysis
Correlations
Diffusion Tensor Imaging
Female
Frontal Lobe - anatomy & histology
Frontal Lobe - physiology
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Mathematical Concepts
Mathematics
Nerve Net - anatomy & histology
Nerve Net - physiology
Neuropsychological Tests
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Parietal lobe
Parietal Lobe - anatomy & histology
Parietal Lobe - physiology
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Tensors
White matter
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Summary:Functional MRI studies of mental arithmetic consistently report blood oxygen level-dependent signals in the parietal and frontal regions. We tested whether white matter pathways connecting these regions are related to mental arithmetic ability by using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to measure these pathways in 28 children (age 10-15 years, 14 girls) and assessing their mental arithmetic skills. For each child, we identified anatomically the anterior portion of the superior longitudinal fasciculus (aSLF), a pathway connecting parietal and frontal cortex. We measured fractional anisotropy in a core region centered along the length of the aSLF. Fractional anisotropy in the left aSLF positively correlates with arithmetic approximation skill, as measured by a mental addition task with approximate answer choices. The correlation is stable in adjacent core aSLF regions but lower toward the pathway endpoints. The correlation is not explained by shared variance with other cognitive abilities and did not pass significance in the right aSLF. These measurements used DTI, a structural method, to test a specific functional model of mental arithmetic.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.0906094106