title: Parietal hyper-connectivity, aberrant brain organization, and circuit-based biomarkers in children with mathematical disabilities.
abstract: Mathematical disabilities (MD) have a negative life-long impact on professional success, employment, and health outcomes. Yet little is known about the intrinsic functional brain organization that contributes to poor math skills in affected children. It is now increasingly recognized that math cognition requires coordinated interaction within a large-scale fronto-parietal network anchored in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). Here we characterize intrinsic functional connectivity within this IPS-network in children with MD, relative to a group of typically developing (TD) children who were matched on age, gender, IQ, working memory, and reading abilities. Compared to TD children, children with MD showed hyper-connectivity of the IPS with a bilateral fronto-parietal network. Importantly, aberrant IPS connectivity patterns accurately discriminated children with MD and TD children, highlighting the possibility for using IPS connectivity as a brain-based biomarker of MD. To further investigate regional abnormalities contributing to network-level deficits in children with MD, we performed whole-brain analyses of intrinsic low-frequency fluctuations. Notably, children with MD showed higher low-frequency fluctuations in multiple fronto-parietal areas that overlapped with brain regions that exhibited hyper-connectivity with the IPS. Taken together, our findings suggest that MD in children is characterized by robust network-level aberrations, and is not an isolated dysfunction of the IPS. We hypothesize that intrinsic hyper-connectivity and enhanced low-frequency fluctuations may limit flexible resource allocation, and contribute to aberrant recruitment of task-related brain regions during numerical problem solving in children with MD.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.|Education and Child Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Dietsje
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Jolles
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.|School of Education, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
authors.forename: Sarit
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ashkenazi
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kochalka
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Tanya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Evans
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Richardson
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Miriam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rosenberg-Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Kaustubh
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Supekar
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Tianwen
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.|Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA.
authors.forename: Vinod
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Menon
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055641:Mathematical Concepts; D008433:Mathematics; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000503:physiopathology; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers