It's good to find out what your kids can be good at an early age in order to know how you can help them get better at things.
One of the skills that can now be more easily detected at an early stage is their mathematical ability. In a latest study, scientists found that kids' math aptitude can be determined by simply looking at their brains.
It's literally that simple, but brain scans would require less effort from a young boy or girl compared to an IQ or a math test.
In a latest study published online in The Journal of Neuroscience last Wednesday, Aug. 18, scientists from the Stanford University School of Medicine discussed the results of an experiment. Through brain scans, they monitored the development of numeric abilities in children that lasted for over half a decade.
"We can identify brain systems that support children's match skill development over six years in childhood and early adolescence," said Tanya Evans, PhD, psychiatry and behavioral sciences postdoctoral scholar, who is also the lead author of the study.
Instead of devising new math aptitude tests, the researchers studied the connections among several regions of the brain and gray matter volume to forecast the acquisition of math skills by eight-year-old kids.
For their study, the researchers monitored 43 children for six years, starting at age eight. The kids who participated in the experiment had normal intelligence, took tests and from time to time sat with their heads stuck to ordinary magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans which map the brain's physical structure and functional MRIs (fMRI) which show function.
The participants also took standardized tests that measured their IQ, math, reading and working-memory skills. Before the age of 14, all of them came back at least once for follow-up assessments on the same skills. Many of them also had additional follow-ups.
The experiment found that brain scans used on the eight-year-olds captured many aspects of information processing, making it better and easier to forecast which children will excel, and which will fall behind. According to Evans, brain features make more precise predictions of children's mathematical learning abilities, compared to the initial IQ, math, reading and working-memory tests.
"A long-term goal of this research is to identify children who might benefit most from targeted math intervention at an early age," said Vinod Menon, PhD, psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor and a senior author to the study. He also emphasized the importance of mathematics in a society of increasing technology. Menon also said that while it is impractical at this point to get children to undergo brain scans at a larger scale, experts may be able to develop remediation programs for kids with learning disabilities, with the help of the baseline understanding that their study provides.
Photo: D Coetzee | Flickr
