Newly trained navigation and verbal memory skills in humans elicit changes in task-related networks but not brain structure.

Abstract

Training cognitive skills, such as remembering a list of words or navigating a new city, has important implications for everyday life. Yet, understanding what brain changes in humans underlies the acquisition of complex cognitive skills remains unresolved. Here, we developed and validated intensive multiweek interventions in which participants were randomly assigned training in either navigation or verbal memory. Healthy young participants (N=75) underwent structural and functional imaging prior to and following the training. Based on pre-registered and exploratory analyses, we did not find any evidence for changes to gross hippocampal or hippocampal subfield volume, cortical brain volume, or microstructural properties of major white matter tracts due to the training. In contrast, network-based analyses suggested changes in task-related informational connectivity, which occurred primarily between cortical areas and mostly involved putative cognitive control networks. These results suggest that cognitive interventions target more transient configurations in network connectivity rather than more durable structural changes.