Your Brain On Big Bird

As a follow up to yesterday's post, here's an article from Time Magazine's Heath and Family webpage about Jessica Cantlon, a cognitive scientist at the University of Rochester and her colleagues looking at the brains of preschoolers watching Sesame Street to see how they develop as they learn math and reading skills.

From the article: "In the study, Cantlon and her team placed 27 kids between the ages 4 and 11, and 20 adults in the fMRI machine as the participants watched 20 minutes of Sesame Street, which featured short clips on numbers, shapes and language. After the episode, the kids took standardized tests that assessed their math and verbal abilities. Using the fMRI scans, the researchers created neural maps of the kids’ thought processes and compared those maps to the patterns found among the adult participants."

"They found that kids whose brains worked in similar ways to that of the adults received higher scores on their standardized tests. This suggests that the brain develops along a predictable pattern as we age, dedicating certain regions and networks to specific tasks, such as reading, or problem solving. The same brain images also revealed where verbal and math skills tend to develop."

These types of studies will help researchers understand the differences in the way children's brains develop and provide insights into helping with their learning disabilities.