From Brain Patterns to Academic Success: Unveiling Multimodal Signatures in Reading and Mathematics

COEX 

Children's reading and mathematics are two essential abilities that are critical to academic achievements and future career development. Existing neuroimaging research often concentrated on a single ability (reading or mathematical processing) [1][3], or compared them using one specific MRI modality[2][4][5]. However, the multimodal neuroimaging signatures significantly associated with reading and mathematics remained unexplored. Here, via a supervised three-way MRI fusion (fALFF, FA, and GMV), we identified the MRI signatures for comprehensive reading and mathematical processing for 562 children to reveal the common and unique underlying neurobiological basis. Moreover, the longitudinal predictability of the identified baseline MRI signatures for estimating 5 types of cognitive scores one year later (including attention, memory, reasoning, visual perception, and cognitive composite) was examined and validated.