Students' brain power
December 18th 2011 20:34
Brain images of students from Waskom, Texas, will help researchers study whether brain training can improve a person's thinking and learning skills.
The project tests a scientific principle, neuroplasticity, that created a multimillion-dollar industry.
Forty-one Waskom High School students will undergo MRIs while performing memory tests at LSU Health Shreveport as part of a study funded by the National Science Foundation.
Researchers based at Virginia State University in Petersburg, Va., are running the study. They'll look for differences in MRI images taken before and after a 19-week brain training/tutoring program.
The study is based on preliminary work the researchers did with middle school students in Petersburg, Va., said Omar Faison, PhD, interim chair of VSU's biology department. Faison, one of the lead researchers, will focus on the functional MRIs.
Students in Petersburg took an intelligence test. Researchers sorted them into higher and lower intelligence groups based on the results, then had the students undergo a functional MRI while performing memory tests. The two groups showed quite different
"The students who were of quote higher intelligence used the part of the brain we were interested in differently," Faison said.
"On the easier tasks, they didn't really use their brains. On the harder tasks, their brain lit up. With the lower group, we started seeing the activation of their brain on the easier tests."
Faison and lead researcher Oliver Hill Jr. want to see whether the brain training can actually make the memory tests easier for the lower-ranked Waskom students and help higher-ranked students do more of the testing before their brains activate.
Faison said they hope to publish the results by the end of 2012. The 41 students receiving MRIs are part of a group of 240 participating the study.
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Students were assigned randomly to one of three groups. One group will receive one-on-one training and a another online training with a facilitator in the room.
The third group won't receive any extra tutoring beyond what the school provides.
Researchers will also look at the entire group's grades and scores on Texas state standardized tests.
Brandi Foshee, of Waskom, gave the idea a thumbs-up. She has two children in the study, and both will receive MRIs.
Her daughter Kourtni Griffith, a junior, will be in the group that receives individual tutoring. Her son Bryce Davis, a freshman, will be on the online tutoring group.
"They'll get a 3D image of their brain," Foshee said. "I thought it would be a good thing as far as the brain training."
LearningRx, a franchised brain training and tutoring company, will work with the students.
A demonstration of the LearningRx method at a conference on education and the brain piqued Hill's interest in the company.
He said he chose the company to provide training for the study because it was open to sharing its in-house data and making its methods available for research.
"We did some initial pilot studies with secondary students in Virginia that produced some very promising results," Hill said via email.
"The Waskom study is an expanded version of those pilot studies in a randomized control design, which will allow more confidence in the outcomes."
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