Multimodal imaging of parietal brain networks in adults and children with developmental dyscalculia

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It is estimated that 3-6% of children and adults have Developmental Dyscalculia (DD). Impaired mathematical skills have a considerable cost to the individual. For example, the recent Government Office for Science Foresight project Mental Capital and Wellbeing (2008) estimated that having developmental dyscalculia reduced lifetime earnings by #114,000 and reduced the probability of achieving 5 or more GCSEs (A*-C) by 7 ? 20 percentage points. There is also a cost to society, as those with dyscalculia are twice as likely to be unemployed as non-affected individuals, and a potential mental health cost, as it has been estimated that having dyscalculia raises the risk of depression 3-fold (Butterworth, 2008). Having a better understanding of the underlying causes of dyscalculia would improve our ability to detect early in life who is at risk, and also improve the remediation that we can offer. Our project should provide (1) a much more elaborate theoretical understanding of DD than currently available, (2) clear recommendations for identification methods for DD, (3) potential avenues for developing remediation for DD.