Fumiko Hoeft

Professor and Campus Director, UConn Waterbury University of Connecticut

  • Storrs CT

Dr. Hoeft is a neurophysiologist, as well as a systems and developmental cognitive neuroscientist.

Contact

University of Connecticut

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Biography

Dr. Hoeft is a neurophysiologist, as well as a systems and developmental cognitive neuroscientist with theoretical interests in the neurobiological mechanisms underlying individual differences in brain maturational processes, acquisition of skills such as literacy and how they interact. Her other areas of interest include brain development, neuroimaging, individual differences, literacy acquisition, and dyslexia.

She is also the lab director of the Laboratory for Learning Engineering and Neural Systems (brainLENS), a collaboration between researchers at UConn and the University of California, San Francisco; and the director of the UConn Waterbury campus.

Areas of Expertise

Neuroimaging
Scientific Writing
Neuroscience
Science
Life Sciences

Education

Keio University

PhD

Neuroscience/Neurophysiology

2003

Keio University School of Medicine

MD

1995

Social

Media Appearances

How do we learn to read?

Vermont Public  

2023-07-28

11-year-old Alaska (from Colorado) wants to know: why do some kids love reading while others don’t? We know there’s a lot of debate lately about the best ways to teach kids how to read. But in this episode we leave the pedagogy to adults and let kids share with one another why they love to read and their best tips for kids like them, who may be struggling to learn (and love) to read. Plus, guest Fumiko Hoeft, medical doctor and professor at the University of Connecticut and at the University of California San Francisco, lifts the lid on our brains to explain what’s happening inside us when we learn to read. Dr. Hoeft runs a brain imaging research program and a lab called BrainLENS.

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The Scientist: Dr. Fumiko Hoeft

The Waterbury  online

2023-06-22

Like many professionals, Fumiko Hoeft has a curriculum vitae, or CV – in essence, a resume which offers a summation of a person's education and career to date. Prior to our discussion, she has emailed her CV to us as a Microsoft Word attachment. This is standard fare, until one opens the file and finds tabbed sections like Edited Books, Peer-Reviewed Publications, Selected Abstracts, and Invited Symposia – as well as seventy pages of accolades and accomplishments.

Yes, seventy.

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Half a million Pa. kids are supposed to be learning to read right now. Are they?

WHYY Radio  radio

2020-10-05

Experts worry about those lost kids — the students who most need explicit reading instruction, but aren’t getting it right now. Those could be students with a diagnosed learning disability or those who just aren’t the most natural language decoders.

What happens when they return? Will they have the support and care needed to fight through the accumulated deficits? Or will they drift further into academic frustration?

“Some kids are gonna be minimally impacted. Some kids are gonna be hugely impacted,” said Fumiko Hoeft, a researcher who studies reading development at the University of Connecticut and University of California San Francisco. “And the teachers will have to deal with that widened gap when they come back.”

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Articles

Neural Noise Hypothesis of Developmental Dyslexia.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Hancock R, Pugh KR, Hoeft F.

2017-06-21

Developmental dyslexia (decoding-based reading disorder; RD) is a complex trait with multifactorial origins at the genetic, neural, and cognitive levels. There is evidence that low-level sensory-processing deficits precede and underlie phonological problems, which are one of the best-documented aspects of RD. RD is also associated with impairments in integrating visual symbols with their corresponding speech sounds. Although causal relationships between sensory processing, print-speech integration, and fluent reading, and their neural bases are debated, these processes all require precise timing mechanisms across distributed brain networks. Neural excitability and neural noise are fundamental to these timing mechanisms. Here, we propose that neural noise stemming from increased neural excitability in cortical networks implicated in reading is one key distal contributor to RD.

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Possible roles for fronto-striatal circuits in reading disorder.

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews

Hancock R, Richlan F, Hoeft F

2016-11-05

Several studies have reported hyperactivation in frontal and striatal regions in individuals with reading disorder (RD) during reading-related tasks. Hyperactivation in these regions is typically interpreted as a form of neural compensation related to articulatory processing. Fronto-striatal hyperactivation in RD could however, also arise from fundamental impairment in reading related processes, such as phonological processing and implicit sequence learning relevant to early language acquisition. We review current evidence for the compensation hypothesis in RD and apply large-scale reverse inference to investigate anatomical overlap between hyperactivation regions and neural systems for articulation, phonological processing, implicit sequence learning. We found anatomical convergence between hyperactivation regions and regions supporting articulation, consistent with the proposed compensatory role of these regions, and low convergence with phonological and implicit sequence learning regions. Although the application of large-scale reverse inference to decode function in a clinical population should be interpreted cautiously, our findings suggest future lines of research that may clarify the functional significance of hyperactivation in RD.

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Intergenerational Neuroimaging of Human Brain Circuitry.

Trends in Neuroscience

Ho TC, Sanders SJ, Gotlib IH, Hoeft F

2016-10-10

Neuroscientists are increasingly using advanced neuroimaging methods to elucidate the intergenerational transmission of human brain circuitry. This new line of work promises to shed light on the ontogeny of complex behavioral traits, including psychiatric disorders, and possible mechanisms of transmission. Here we highlight recent intergenerational neuroimaging studies and provide recommendations for future work.

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