A Brain Imaging Study on the Association Between Chess Expertise and Visual Spatial Working Memory in School-Aged...

Objectives: To explore the brain imaging correlates of the association between chess skill level and visual spatial working memory (VSWM) in school-aged children. Methods: This study analyzed a final sample of 20 school-aged children (aged 10-15 years, mean age of 13.48 ± 1.23 years; including 9 experts and 11 novices) selected from an initial pool of 40 recruited participants from primary and secondary schools and chess clubs in Beijing. They were divided into an experimental group (expert-level school-aged children from a Beijing chess club) and a control group (novice-level children from a Beijing primary and secondary school who had not systematically participated in chess courses but understood basic chess knowledge). The N-back task was used to assess behavioral differences in VSWM. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and surface-based morphometry (SBM) techniques were employed to analyze differences in gray matter volume and cortical thickness in the brain structure of expert- and novice-level children. Differences in resting-state functional imaging were also analyzed. Results: The results showed the following: (1) The expert-level children demonstrated significantly higher accuracy and shorter reaction times in VSWM tasks compared to novices. (2) Differences in gray matter volume and cortical thickness were observed between the expert and novice groups. (3) Expert-level children showed significantly higher resting-state ALFF/fALFF values in the dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus, cingulate gyrus, and orbitofrontal cortex compared to novices. Conclusions: In conclusion, expert-level school-aged children exhibit distinctive regional structural and intrinsic functional profiles. These non-causal neural variations co-vary with selective cognitive baselines characterizing specialized low-load visual spatial processing rather than a generalized working memory expansion, reflecting brain signatures associated with varying tiers of chess expertise.