Developmental and Lesion Effects in Brain Activation During Sentence Comprehension and Mental Rotation

Abstract

The development of neurocognitive networks was examined in 2 cognitive paradigms: auditory sentence comprehension and mental rotation of alphanumeric stimuli. Patterns of brain activation were measured with whole brain echoplanar functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3 Tesla in 5 adults (20-28 years old), 7 children (9-12 years old), and 6 pediatric patients (9-12 years old) with perinatal strokes or periventricular hemorrhages. Healthy children and adults activated similar neurocognitive networks, but there were developmental differences in the distribution of activity across these networks. In the sentence task, children showed more activation in the inferior visual area suggesting an imagery strategy rather than a linguistic strategy for sentence processing. Furthermore, consistent use of a sentence comprehension strategy, whether correct or incorrect as compared to chance performance, was associated with greater activation in the inferior frontal area (Broca's) in both children and pediatric patients. In the mental rotation task, healthy adults showed more activation in the superior parietal and middle frontal areas and less activation in the supramarginal gyrus, suggesting adults were primarily engaged in visual-spatial manipulation and less engaged in the recognition of noncanonical views of stimuli. The pediatric patients showed patterns of activation consistent with organization of cognitive processing into homologous areas of the contralateral hemisphere.

Brain activation during mental rotation in school children and adults

“…Similar brain areas were activated in children and adults as reported earlier by Booth et al (1999Booth et al ( , 2000. Among those, the IPS is known to be a core region involved in mental rotation (Alivisatos and Petrides, 1997;Carpenter et al, 1999;Harris et al, 2000;Harris and Miniussi, 2003;Jordan et al, 2002;Kosslyn et al, 1998;Richter et al, 1997;Tagaris et al, 1996Tagaris et al, , 1998Vingerhoets et al, 2001).…”

“…Results showed that healthy children and adults activate similar brain areas, but there were differences in the distribution of activation across these networks. Adults showed more activation in the superior parietal and middle frontal areas and less activation in the supramarginal gyrus (Booth et al, 2000). In children, the inferior parietal lobe was more active in the right hemisphere, whereas activation in the superior parietal lobe was more lateralized in the left hemisphere (Booth et al, 1999).…”

“…To our knowledge, four neuroimaging studies have been carried out until now. One study used functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activation of 9-12 year old children during mental rotation of alphanumeric stimuli (Booth et al, 1999(Booth et al, , 2000. Results showed that healthy children and adults activate similar brain areas, but there were differences in the distribution of activation across these networks.…”

Genetic and Neurochemical Modulation of Prefrontal Cognitive Functions in Children

“…Diverse mental rotation measures have produced consistently robust parietal activation and shown marked sensitivity to parietal damage in both adults (44)(45)(46) and children (47).…”

Syndrome analysis of difficulties in comprehending logical grammatical constructions by children

“…В наших предыдущих публикациях было проде-монстрировано, что у детей младшего школьного возраста процесс понима-ния ЛГК тесно связан с уровнем разви-тия серийной организации речи. Мно-гочисленные нейровизуализационные исследования (в том числе, детей) по-казали, что понимание грамматически сложных предложений вызывает повы-шенную активацию зон, расположен-ных и в передних отделах мозга (44 и 45 поля по Бродману, премоторная кора), и в задних (задняя треть верхней ви-сочной извилины, задняя часть верхней височной борозды, угловая и надкрае-вая извилины, передняя треть средней височной извилины) 1996, Caplan et al;1999, Booth et al, 2000Kaan, Swaab, 2002;BenSchachar et al 2004;Grodzinsky, 2006;Rodd et al, 2010;Yeatman et al, 2010;Den Ouden et al, 2012).…”