Anticipation - What's it look like in the brain

Recent fMRI's research shows anticipation, a very complex mental task, activates many parts of the brain that scientists hadn't expected to be activated. Many of these areas also have been shown to fire in IM tasks. Click here for the article.

Think about it, in IM you are anticipating every single hit,  initiating another choice, analyzing the feedback, and planning a response.  All these mental tasks are considered executive functions - higher level thought processes that I often see gains in with IM.  Parents report gains in these more often a few months out of IM  rather than immediately after IM  usually.  Sometimes it takes building the support skills first and then these higher level tasks can come on line a bit later.