Functional hyperconnectivity vanishes in children with developmental dyscalculia after numerical intervention

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology

Background:

• Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a learning disability impacting numerical processing.
• Behavioral training can improve DD deficits, but neural reorganization mechanisms remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate neural functional connectivity changes in children with DD after number line training.
• To determine if intensive training normalizes brain network activity in DD.

Main Methods:

• fMRI and functional connectivity analysis were used in typically developing (TD) children and children with DD before and after a 5-week number line training program.
• The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) served as a seed region for connectivity analysis.
• Multivariate classification analyzed task-related fMRI data to differentiate between groups.

Main Results:

• Children with DD exhibited hyperconnectivity in parietal, frontal, visual, and temporal regions compared to TD children before training.
• This hyperconnectivity normalized after training, coinciding with improved math abilities.
• Classification accuracy decreased significantly post-training, indicating normalized neural patterns.

Conclusions:

• Intensive number line training can normalize abnormally high functional connectivity in developmental dyscalculia.
• Training induces a reorganization of inter-regional task engagement in the brain.
• These findings highlight the potential of targeted interventions for DD.