The third MR imaging national competition (MRNC 2019) with the focus on the investigation of learning disability

The 3rd MR imaging national competition was held on attendance and remote attendance stages in May 2019.

Learning disability refers to neurobiological disorders that can interfere with person ability to receive, process, memorize, retrieve, and respond to verbal and non-verbal information. Nowadays, SLD) Specific Learning Disability( is used for the situation when people have a problem with learning and skills such as reading (dyslexia), writing (dysgraphia), and mathematical calculation (dyscalculia), APD, speaking, and reasoning. People with these disorders, despite their disabilities, are average or smarter than average.

The studies demonstrated that fMRI could be useful for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of learning disabilities. Accordingly, NBML held the third MR national competition for the ideas of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of learning disabilities deficiency. You may find its details on proposal submission on news and previous announcements.

On the first stage, all of the participants submitted their proposals by 19 April 2019, and the following teams qualified to the second stage of the competition after reviewing and judging the plans:

Word-Image team
Neurotronix team
Pardazesh Adad team
Tarhe no team
NICOG team
Dyslexia, halghei shekafdar Team
EEMed team
Independent Component team
Neuro shenakht sharif

On the second stage held on 28 April 2019, every team agents had 15 minutes to present their proposal under predefined format and terms in the presence of juries who then asked their questions for 10 minutes. All members of groups had to be able to respond to their questions

Given criteria on the attendance assessment were as follows:

problem statement
Proposal Novelty
Proposal feasibility
Proposal practicability
Presentation style
Answering manner
Variety of members fields

Everything being equal, proposals aiming at solving the current national problems achieved a higher score.

Finally, the following three groups among nine groups were announced as winners:

1st: Neurotronix team
- Leader: Mr. Ali Namjoo Moghadam (Medical Student at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences)

2nd: Pardazesh Adad team
- Leader: Mr. Alireza Karami (Bachelor of Computer Engineering at Sharif University of Technology and Master of Cognitive Sciences at Shahid Beheshti University)