Developmental trajectories of grey and white matter in dyscalculia
Ranpura, A., Isaacs, E.B., Edmonds, C.J., Rogers, M., Lanigan, J., Singhal, A., … Butterworth, B.
doi:10.1016/j.tine.2013.06.007
Developmental dyscalculia is a significant neural deficit with broad social impact. A number of techniques have been used to identify the brain basis of dyscalculia, and many of these have highlighted the role of the intraparietal sulci and a left fronto-parietal network in the representation of core number skills. These studies offer conflicting explanations of the neurobiological deficits associated with dyscalculia, and to date few studies have elucidated the timeline of cortical changes involved. Here we report a volumetric study comparing well-characterized dyscalculic learners aged from 8 to 14 years with tightly matched controls. Using automated cortical parcellation of anatomical MRI, we show that the posterior parietal and fronto-parietal systems in dyscalculia may undergo abnormal development during the pre-teenage and teenage years. As a result, the present study more clearly characterizes the underlying neural basis of dyscalculia than previous studies have hitherto achieved.