Protracted Neural Development of Dorsal Motor Systems During Handwriting and the Relation to Early Literacy Skills

Abstract

Handwriting is a complex visual-motor skill that affects early reading development. A large body of work has demonstrated that handwriting is supported by a widespread neural system comprising ventral-temporal, parietal, and frontal motor regions in adults. Recent work has demonstrated that this neural system is largely established by 8 years of age, suggesting that the development of this system occurs in young children who are still learning to read and write. We made use of a novel MRI-compatible writing tablet that allowed us to measure brain activation in 5–8-year-old children during handwriting. We compared activation during handwriting in children and adults to provide information concerning the developmental trajectory of the neural system that supports handwriting. We found that parietal and frontal motor involvement during handwriting in children is different from adults, suggesting that the neural system that supports handwriting changes over the course of development. Furthermore, we found that parietal and frontal motor activation correlated with a literacy composite score in our child sample, suggesting that the individual differences in the dorsal response during handwriting are related to individual differences in emerging literacy skills. Our results suggest that components of the widespread neural system supporting handwriting develop at different rates and provide insight into the mechanisms underlying the contributions of handwriting to early literacy development.

Brain Correlates of Chinese Handwriting and Their Relation to Reading Development in Children: An fMRI Study

“…Another study further examined the development of brain activation patterns associated with handwriting in young children (aged 5.5–8 years old). Children and adults exhibited differences in the activation of the left IPS and ventral precentral gyrus, suggesting that the dorsal neural network that supports handwriting exhibits a development trend [ 15 ]. These findings suggest that the changes in regional activation and functional lateralization of motor and visual regions are associated with handwriting development.…”

“…At the neural level, direct evidence of a writing-and-reading connection is derived from the activation of shared regions (the premotor cortex) by both handwriting and visual letter recognition [ 24 , 25 , 26 ]. In addition, the activation of the motor cortex is positively correlated with letter recognition [ 15 ]. Furthermore, a large body of evidence indicates that handwriting training increases brain activation in the motor (e.g., ventral and dorsal premotor cortex and IPS) and visual regions (e.g., the FG and lingual gyrus) involved in reading processing [ 23 , 27 , 28 , 29 ].…”