The emergent mental operation of the learning brain
Tianyong Xu, Peng Tao, Jiali Mu, Xiao Han, Fan Liu, Peng Gao, Tian Xia, Zhu-Qing Gong, Hongjian He, Ting Xu, Luonan Chen, F N Chen, Xi‐Nian Zuo
The paper tracks five-year longitudinal data of children learning abacus-based mental calculation to show how sustained practice reconfigures whole-brain states and enables complex skill acquisition.
bioRxiv · Jun 4, 2026 · PreprintNeuroscience