Back to Search
Start Over
Differences in brain morphology and working memory capacity across childhood
- Source :
- Developmental Science
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2017.
-
Abstract
- Working memory (WM) skills are closely associated with learning progress in key areas such as reading and mathematics across childhood. As yet, however, little is known about how the brain systems underpinning WM develop over this critical developmental period. The current study investigated whether and how structural brain correlates of components of the working memory system change over development. Verbal and visuospatial short‐term and working memory were assessed in 153 children between 5.58 and 15.92 years, and latent components of the working memory system were derived. Fractional anisotropy and cortical thickness maps were derived from T1‐weighted and diffusion‐weighted MRI and processed using eigenanatomy decomposition. There was a greater involvement of the corpus callosum and posterior temporal white matter in younger children for performance associated with the executive part of the working memory system. For older children, this was more closely linked with the thickness of the occipitotemporal cortex. These findings suggest that increasing specialization leads to shifts in the contribution of neural substrates over childhood, moving from an early dependence on a distributed system supported by long‐range connections to later reliance on specialized local circuitry. Our findings demonstrate that despite the component factor structure being stable across childhood, the underlying brain systems supporting working memory change. Taking the age of the child into account, and not just their overall score, is likely to be critical for understanding the nature of the limitations on their working memory capacity.
- Subjects :
- Paper
Male
Adolescent
Cognitive Neuroscience
Short-term memory
Corpus callosum
Brain mapping
Spatial memory
050105 experimental psychology
Developmental psychology
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Child Development
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Humans
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Child
Cerebral Cortex
Brain Mapping
Working memory
05 social sciences
Brain morphometry
Age Factors
Brain
Child development
Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Memory, Short-Term
Child, Preschool
Papers
Anisotropy
Female
Childhood memory
Psychology
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14677687 and 1363755X
- Volume :
- 21
- Issue :
- 3
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Developmental Science
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....17e4af38c826080f85fa881945e345ab