Cortical Correlates of Dyscalculia in the Preterm Population: The Search Continues

Better survival rates among very-low-birthweight (VLBW) infants in recent decades have been associated with greater prevalence of neurologic handicaps, including cerebral palsy and specific learning disabilities; the latter occur in about half of those born before 27 weeks' gestation. Unlike language and attention disabilities in VLBW infants, the dyscalculias, which occur as isolated learning disabilities in nearly 6 percent of the general population, have received little attention in the literature.

These authors hypothesized that impaired calculation ability in adolescents born as VLBW infants is associated with "anomalous structure in the left parietal lobe." They evaluated the numerative abilities of a heterogenous population of 80 chil…