New brain-imaging research provides clues regarding how children’s brains memorize facts, according to a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine. This is the first evidence gathered from a longitudinal study that helps to explain the way the brain reorganizes itself when children learn math facts.

The results, published online in Nature Neuroscience on August 17, help to explain brain reorganization within normal development of cognitive skills while offering a comparison point for future studies regarding what goes wrong in brains of children who have learning disabilities.

The study’s senior author, Vinod Menon, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, said in a statement, “We wanted to understand how children acquire new knowledge, and determine why some children learn to retrieve facts from memory better than others.” He continued, “This work provides insight into the dynamic changes that occur over the course of cognitive development in each child.”

The study is an addition to existing research regarding the differences in the ways that the brains of children and adults solve math problems. Children use particular regions of the brain, such as the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex, vastly differently from adults when both groups solve the same math problems, the study showed.

The paper’s lead author and postdoctoral scholar, Shaozheng Qin, PhD, said in a statement, “It was surprising to us that the hippocampal and prefrontal contributions to memory-based problem-solving during childhood don’t look anything like what we would have expected for the adult brain.”

According to the Child Welfare Information Gateway, brain development is the process of creating, strengthening, and discarding connections within the neurons. These connections are referred to as synapses.