Spontaneous brain activity predicts learning ability of foreign sounds

Can 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.This work was supported in part by Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacio/ńn Grants PSI2010-20168, PSI2012-/n34071, and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 Programme CDS-2007-00012, Generalitat Valenciana Grant APOSTD//n2012068, and Universitat Jaume I Grant P1-1B2012-38. G.D. was supported by the ERC Advanced Grant/nDYSTRUCTURE (no. 295129). by the Spanish Research Project SAF2010-16085, and by the CONSOLIDER-INGENIO/n2010 Program CSD2007-0001