Handwriting in Education

Learning to write letters and digits by hand in preschool.

Visual experiences of letter production contribute to the development of the neural systems supporting letter perception.

Constraining stroke order during manual symbol learning hinders subsequent recognition in children under 4 ½ years.

The MRItab: An MR-compatible touchscreen with video-display.

Visual-motor symbol production facilitates letter knowledge in young children.

Brain Structure

White matter microstructure and macrostructure brain charts across the human lifespan.

Head Motion in Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Quantification, Mitigation, and Structural Associations in Large, Cross‐Sectional Datasets Across the Lifespan.

Associative white matter tracts selectively predict sensorimotor learning.

Development of human hippocampal subfield microstructure and relation to associative inference.

Denoising diffusion-weighted MRI data using convolutional neural networks.

 Development of white matter tracts between and within the dorsal and ventral streams.

Brain Function

Protracted neural development of dorsal motor systems during handwriting and the relation to early literacy skills.

Visual-motor contingency during symbol production contributes to the development of the neural systems supporting symbol perception and concurrent gains in symbol recognition.

Ecological validity of experimental set-up affects parietal involvement during letter production.

An analysis of the brain systems involved with producing letters by hand.

Visual-motor functional connectivity in preschool children emerges after handwriting experience.

Neural substrates of sensorimotor processes: Letter writing and letter perception.

Supporting Open Science

brainlife. io: a decentralized and open-source cloud platform to support neuroscience research.

ezBIDS: Guided standardization of neuroimaging data interoperable with major data archives and platforms.

Our Principal Investigator, Dr. Sophia Vinci-Booher

Dr. Vinci-Booher is an Assistant Professor of Educational Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology and Human Development in the Peabody College of Education. She is also affiliated with the Program in Neuroscience in the College of Arts and Sciences, Vanderbilt Brain Institute, Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, and the Vanderbilt Data Science Institute.