ReviewBrain sciences2026
Behavioral Improvement and Task-Related Brain Activation Following Cognitive Training in Children/Adolescents and Young Adults: A Three-Level Behavioral and Coordinate-Based Neuroimaging Meta-Analysis.
Review in Brain sciences, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND/
objectivesCognitive training provides a framework for examining how repeated practice relates to changes in cognitive performance and task-related brain activation, yet age-stratified patterns of neural effects remain unclear.
methodsWe conducted a three-level behavioral meta-analysis and a coordinate-based Seed-based Mapping (SDM) meta-analysis of task-based neuroimaging studies to jointly examine behavioral improvement and task-related activation convergence following cognitive training.
resultsCognitive training was associated with reliable behavioral improvement at the aggregate level (Hedges' g = 0.546, 95% CI [0.414, 0.678]) and within both children/adolescents and young adults. SDM results indicated that task-related activation changes were spatially heterogeneous and included both increases and decreases across distributed brain regions. In age-stratified analyses, spatial convergence within children/adolescents involved occipital and frontoparietal regions; within young adults, it involved cingulo-insular and posterior midline regions. Exploratory behavioral moderator analyses indicated outcome-dependent variation, with smaller effects for transfer outcomes and larger effects in studies with greater training exposure.
conclusionsBehavioral improvements across included designs were observed in both age groups, whereas task-related activation convergence exhibited spatially heterogeneous, age-stratified patterns. These findings suggest that training-related neural effects are better characterized as spatial convergence patterns across studies rather than as a single uniform activation change. The age-stratified maps describe spatial convergence within each age group and should not be interpreted as statistically established developmental differences.
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