The Effects of Working Memory Training on Brain Activity

The effects of equine-assisted activities on execution function in children aged 7-8 years: A randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

This study examines the effects of equine-assisted activity (EAA) training on executive functioning (EF) (inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility) in children aged 7-8 years.

METHODS

Twenty-Four healthy children aged 7-8 years with a 1:1 ratio of boys to girls were randomly divided into EAA group (EAAG) or control group (CG). The subjects in EAAG were trained for 12 weeks, and CG participated in normal daily activities. All subjects conducted the Flanker, 1-Back, and More-odd shifting tasks at rest and recorded the average reaction times (RTs) and accuracy data of each task.

RESULTS

After 12 weeks of EAA intervention, EAAG showed a highly significant increase (p < .01) in mean RTs and accuracy in the Flanker and More-odd shifting tasks and a highly significant increase (p < .01) in accuracy only in 1-Back.

CONCLUSION

These findings suggest that 12-week EAA training can be effective in improving EF and promoting cognitive performance in children aged 7-8 years.

Phonological and morphological literacy skills in English and Chinese: A cross-linguistic neuroimaging comparison of Chinese-English bilingual and monolingual English children

Over the course of literacy development, children learn to recognize word sounds and meanings in print. Yet, they do so differently across alphabetic and character-based orthographies such as English and Chinese. To uncover cross-linguistic influences on children's literacy, we asked young Chinese-English simultaneous bilinguals and English monolinguals (N = 119, ages 5-10) to complete phonological and morphological awareness (MA) literacy tasks. Children completed the tasks in the auditory modality in each of their languages during functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging. Cross-linguistically, comparisons between bilinguals' two languages revealed that the task that was more central to reading in a given orthography, such as phonological awareness (PA) in English and MA in Chinese, elicited less activation in the left inferior frontal and parietal regions. Group comparisons between bilinguals and monolinguals in English, their shared language of academic instruction, revealed that the left inferior frontal was less active during phonology but more active during morphology in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. MA skills are generally considered to have greater language specificity than PA skills. Bilingual literacy training in a skill that is maximally similar across languages, such as PA, may therefore yield greater automaticity for this skill, as reflected in the lower activation in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. This interpretation is supported by negative correlations between proficiency and brain activation. Together, these findings suggest that both the structural characteristics and literacy experiences with a given language can exert specific influences on bilingual and monolingual children's emerging brain networks for learning to read.

Impairments in the Default Mode and Executive Networks in Methamphetamine Users During Short-Term Abstinence

Purpose

Methamphetamine use may cause severe neurotoxicity and cognitive impairment, leading to addiction, overdose, and high rates of relapse. However, few studies have systematically focused on functional impairments detected by neuroimaging in methamphetamine abstainers (MAs) during short-term abstinence. This study aimed to investigate effective connectivity, resting-state networks, and internetwork functional connectivity in MA brains to improve clinical treatment.

Methods

Twenty MAs and 27 age- and education-matched healthy controls underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. The amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations and Granger causality were analyzed to investigate disrupted brain regions and effective connectivity, respectively. Independent component analysis and functional network connectivity were used to identify resting-state networks and internetwork functional connectivity, respectively.

Results

Compared with healthy controls, MAs demonstrated abnormal amplitudes of low-frequency fluctuations in the bilateral precuneus, left posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), left superior parietal lobule, left supplementary motor area (SMA), and left inferior parietal lobule (IPL). Moreover, MAs showed decreased effective connectivity from the left PCC to the left precuneus, increased effective connectivity from the left precuneus to the left MFG and from the right precuneus to the left SMA, and altered functional connectivity within the default mode network (DMN), frontoparietal network, sensorimotor network, ventral attention network, cerebellar network, and visual network. Importantly, hyperconnectivity between the DMN and ventral attention network and hypoconnectivity between the DMN and cerebellar network as well as the DMN and frontoparietal network were demonstrated in MAs.

Conclusion

Our study implies that in short-term methamphetamine abstinence, disruptions to the DMN and executive network may a play key role, providing new insights for early rehabilitation.