Could technology predict how smart a child becomes? Scientists have found that assessing structural and functional changes in the brain may just predict future memory performance in healthy children and adolescents. The findings shed new light not only on cognitive development, but also provide researchers with new tools that could help identify children at risk for development challenges in the future.
Working memory capacity is the ability to hold onto information for a short period of time. It's actually one of the strongest predictors of future achievements in both math and reading. While previous studies have shown that MRI could predict current working memory performance in children, though, scientists were unsure whether MRI could predict their future cognitive ability.
In this particular study, the researchers evaluated the cognitive abilities of a group of healthy children and adolescents. They measured each child's brain structure and function using MRI. Then, they examined the children's working memory performance two years later. In the end, they found that they could predict how well the children did through the initial brain scan.
"Our results suggest that future cognitive development can be predicted from anatomical and functional information offered by MRI above and beyond that current achieved by cognitive tests," said Henrik Ullman, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This has wide implications for understanding the neural mechanisms of cognitive development."
In fact, the new technique could be used to not only assess how children will do in the future, but may also help children who might suffer from disabilities.
"This study is another contribution to the growing body of neuroimaging research that yields insights into unraveling present and predicting future cognitive capacity in development," said Judy Illes, one of the researchers, in a news release. "However, the appreciation of this important new knowledge is simpler than its application to everyday life. How a child performs today and tomorrow relies on multiple positive and negative events that cannot be assessed by today's technology alone."
The findings are published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
