Ventura Campos, NoeliaSanjuán, AnaGonzález, JulioPalomar García, María ÁngelesRodríguez Pujadas, AinaSebastián Gallés, NúriaDeco, GustavoÁvila, César2015-01-272015-01-272013Ventura N, Sanjuán A, González J, Palomar MA, Rodríguez A, Sebastián N, Deco G, Ávila C. Spontaneous brain activity predicts learning ability of foreign sounds. J Neurosci. 2013 May;33(22):9295-305. DOI 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4655-12.2013.0270-6474http://hdl.handle.net/10230/23075Can learning capacity of the human brain be predicted from initial spontaneous functional connectivity (FC) between brain areas involved in a task? We combined task-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and resting-state fMRI (rs-fMRI) before and after training with a Hindi dental–retroflex nonnative contrast. Previous fMRI results were replicated, demonstrating that this learning recruited the left insula/frontal operculum and the left superior parietal lobe, among other areas of the brain. Crucially, resting-state FC (rs-FC) between these two areas at pretraining predicted individual differences in learning outcomes after distributed (Experiment 1) and intensive training (Experiment 2). Furthermore, this rs-FC was reduced at posttraining, a change that may also account for learning. Finally, resting-state network analyses showed that the mechanism underlying this reduction of rs-FC was mainly a transfer in intrinsic activity of the left frontal operculum/anterior insula from the left frontoparietal network to the salience network. Thus, rs-FC may contribute to predict learning ability and to understand how learning modifies the functioning of the brain. The discovery of this correspondence between initial spontaneous brain activity in task-related areas and posttraining performance opens new avenues to find predictors of learning capacities in the brain using task-related fMRI and rs-fMRI combined.11 p.application/pdfengThe work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4655-12.2013info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess