Impact of school pedagogy on the spatiotemporal brain network dynamics of students

Abstract Across development, experience has a strong impact on the way we think and adapt. School experience affects academic and social-emotional outcomes, yet the extent to which pedagogy modulates underlying brain network development is still unknown. In this study, we compared brain network dynamics of students with different pedagogical backgrounds. Specifically, we characterized the diversity and stability of brain activity at rest by combining both resting-state fMRI and diffusion-weighted structural imaging data of 87 4-18 years-old students experiencing either the Montessori pedagogy (i.e., student-led, trial-and-error pedagogy) or the traditional pedagogy (i.e., teacher-led, test-based pedagogy). Our results revealed spatiotemporal brain dynamics differences between students as a function of schooling experience at the whole-brain level. Students from Montessori schools showed overall higher functional integration (higher system diversity) and neural stability (lower spatiotemporal diversity) compared to traditionally-schooled students. Higher integration was explained mainly through the cerebellar (CBL) functional network, while higher temporal stability was observed in the ventral attention (VA), dorsal attention (DA), somatomotor (SM), frontoparietal (FP), and CBL functional networks. This study suggests a form of experience-dependent dynamic functional connectivity plasticity, in learning-related networks.