Schedule of Events | Symposia

Parent-Child Neural Concordance in Arithmetic and Reading: Evidence from Task-Based fMRI Activation and Functional Connectivity Analyses

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Aymee Alvarez Rivero^1,3, Lien Peters², Daniel Ansari¹; ¹Western University, ²Ghent University, ³Harvard Graduate School of Education

Intergenerational transmission of cognitive abilities is well-established behaviorally, but neural-level similarities between parents and children remain largely unexplored. In this study, we examined parent-child neural concordance during arithmetic and reading tasks using functional MRI. Participants included parent-child dyads who completed phonological processing (rhyming), arithmetic verification, line comparison tasks. We assessed intergenerational effects using two approaches: (1) familial concordance in average activation of specific brain regions involved in arithmetic and reading, and (2) analysis of functional connectivity patterns. To detect family-specific relationships, concordance levels were compared to those obtained when children were paired with random adults. Our findings revealed significant parent-child concordance in activation of the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and medial superior frontal gyrus during arithmetic, and in the hippocampus during reading. Permutation tests confirmed that these concordances were family-specific. These results provide direct evidence that intergenerational influences in arithmetic and reading abilities are also evident at the neural level and can be studied using task-based fMRI. However, functional connectivity patterns did not show family-specific associations, as parents and children were no more similar than random pairs. This contrasts with previous studies using resting-state data, suggesting that task demands may obscure familial similarities in functional connectivity. Overall, this work advances our understanding of the neural basis of cognitive abilities and their intergenerational transmission.

Topic Area: OTHER