Brian Wandell, Ph.D.Psychology DepartmentStanford University

Purpose• Explain measurements of developing brain connections

• Reading and Math Examples

• I am here for discussion – Is anything I can do that is useful to you? 

Courtesy Professor Ugur Ture

Signals between widely separated gray matter regions are carried by long fibers called white matter

Johns Hopkins is a leader in this technology

Scientists recently learned how to estimate these fibers in the living human brain using magnetic resonance methods: 

Diffusion tensor Diffusion tensor imaging, or imaging, or 

Diffusion Diffusion spectrum spectrum imagingimaging

The properties of 

certain fibers are 

correlated with specific 

cognitive abilities.

For example, certain 

fibers in the corpus 

callosum are correlated 

with phonological 

decoding

CorpuscallosumCorpuscallosum

VentricleVentricle

Fibers

Gray matterWhite matterWhite matter

Diffusivity in callosum that

projects to temporal

lobes correlates

with sounding out words

(Dougherty et al., PNAS, 2007)

Reading-related standard scores

O

PS

TT r(45) ~ 0.58p < 0.001

Music and ReadingThe Dana Foundationsupported us to examine the relationship between arts training and reading.

Music provided the strongest correlation between arts training and reading.

The music training explains 16% of the variance in children’s scores.

The horizontal axis shows lifetime hours of music training; the vertical axis shows the improvement in reading fluency between years 3 and years 1.

Visual arts and Math

We incidentally discovered that visual art experience is correlated with math skills.

The horizontal axis shows a weekly average of hours spent on visual art activity in school (year 1).  The vertical axis shows a measure of math skill.  

The correlation explains 10% of the variance in children’s scores.

Michal Ben-ShacharJessica TsangGreen shoots

A B

All fibers in the left hemisphere

Cantlon et al., PLOS Bio, 2006

AFibers connecting putative math regions (Triple-code model, Dehaene, Spelke and others)

anterior superior longitudinal fasciculus (aSLF)

r(25) 0.49, p < 0.02

Explains about 25% of the variance.

No correlation for adjacent track (arcuate)

The correlation is specific to this section of the track

Left

Right

Conclusions

• Connections (and other aspects of 

anatomy) can be measured at 

young ages (easier than fMRI) 

• Healthy development of these 

connections is essential for 

cognition

• How can we work together?

Robert Dougherty

Michal Ben-Shachar, Bar-Ilan, Tel-Aviv

Jessica Tsang, Stanford

Gayle Deutsch, Stanford

Visual fields and pRFsAlyssa Brewer, UC Irvine

Alex Wade, Smith-Kettlewell

Serge Dumoulin, Helmholtz Institute

Hiroshi Horiguchi, Stanford

Kaoru Amano, Tokyo University

Jon Winawer, Stanford

Adult cortical plasticity

Yoichiro Masuda, Jikkei Hospital, Tokyo

Stelios Smirnakis, Baylor College of Medicine

Alyssa Brewer, UC Irvine

Satoshi Nakadomari, Jikkei Hospital, Tokyo

Netta Levin, Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem

Hiroshi Horiguchi, Stanford

Nikos Logothetis, Tuebingen

Reading and Math

We gratefully acknowledge support from:

NIH, DARPA, IBM, Dana Foundation, Schwab Foundation,

Microsoft Co.

Anthony Sherbondy, IBM, Almaden

Nikola Stikov, Stanford

Aviv Mezer, Stanford

Diffusion-methods and qMRI