ERIC Number: EJ825657
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Feb
Pages: 10
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0278-2626
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Developmental Shifts in fMRI Activations during Visuospatial Relational Reasoning
Eslinger, Paul J.; Blair, Clancy; Wang, JianLi; Lipovsky, Bryn; Realmuto, Jennifer; Baker, David; Thorne, Steven; Gamson, David; Zimmerman, Erin; Rohrer, Lisa; Yang, Qing X.
Brain and Cognition, v69 n1 p1-10 Feb 2009
To investigate maturational plasticity of fluid cognition systems, functional brain imaging was undertaken in healthy 8-19 year old participants while completing visuospatial relational reasoning problems similar to Raven's matrices and current elementary grade math textbooks. Analyses revealed that visuospatial relational reasoning across this developmental age range recruited activations in the superior parietal cortices most prominently, the dorsolateral prefrontal, occipital-temporal, and premotor/supplementary cortices, the basal ganglia, and insula. There were comparable activity volumes in left and right hemispheres for nearly all of these regions. Regression analyses indicated increasing activity predominantly in the superior parietal lobes with developmental age. In contrast, multiple anterior neural systems showed significantly less activity with age, including dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal, paracentral, and insula cortices bilaterally, basal ganglia, and particularly large clusters in the midline anterior cingulate/medial frontal cortex, left middle cingulate/supplementary motor cortex, left insula-putamen, and left caudate. Findings suggest that neuromaturational changes associated with visuospatial relational reasoning shift from a more widespread fronto-cingulate-striatal pattern in childhood to predominant parieto-frontal activation pattern in late adolescence. (Contains 3 figures and 4 tables.)
Descriptors: Late Adolescents, Neurology, Thinking Skills, Age Groups, Lateral Dominance, Brain Hemisphere Functions, Brain, Age Differences, Regression (Statistics), Children, Adolescents, Spatial Ability
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A