The relationship between socioeconomic status and white matter microstructure in pre‐reading children: A longitudinal investigation

Ozernov‐Palchik, Ola; Norton, Elizabeth S.; Wang, Yingying; Beach, Sara D.; Zuk, Jennifer; Wolf, Markus; Gabrieli, John D. E.; Gaab, Nadine

doi:10.1002/hbm.24407

Cited by 68 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 144 publications

(223 reference statements)

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“…For example, participants could use orthographic strategies and visual imagery while searching for morphologically-related words. In this case, the effects observed in the ventral tracts may reflect their well-known involvement in orthographic processing (Banfi et al, 2019;Horowitz-Kraus et al, 2014;Huber et al, 2018;Ozernov-Palchik et al, 2019;Vandermosten et al, 2012;Yeatman et al, 2012a). Although the current data do no not allow to preclude this alternative explanation of the results, it seems less plausible given that morpheme-based fluency was not correlated with reading ability.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 52%

“…In the current study, participants used auditorily presented morphological information as a cue for lexical search and oral word production. Although this task did not explicitly involve reading, performance was correlated with the bilateral IFOF and ILF, suggesting that their role in morphememediated lexical access goes beyond their well-established involvement in orthographic processing (Horowitz-Kraus et al, 2014;Ozernov-Palchik et al, 2019;Vandermosten et al, 2012;Welcome and Joanisse, 2014;Yeatman et al, 2012a). Importantly, the associations between morpheme-based fluency and the ventral tracts remained significant when performance in standard verbal fluency tasks was accounted for, suggesting that the observed effects are somewhat specific to the morphological component of the task.…”

Section: Morpheme-based Fluency Is Associated With Ventral and Dorsalmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Dorsal tracts in the left hemisphere were shown to predict phonological skills (Saygin et al, 2013;Yeatman et al, 2011), while ventral tracts were broadly associated with access to meaning (Nugiel et al, 2016;Sarubbo et al, 2015) as well as with reading ability (Cummine et al, 2015;Ozernov-Palchik et al, 2019;Vandermosten et al, 2012;Yeatman et al, 2012a). However, it remains an open question whether these white matter tracts can be mapped onto specific language processes across stimulus and response modality, such as reading, listening and speaking.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A general role for ventral white matter pathways in morphological processing: going beyond reading

Yablonski

Menashe

Ben-Shachar

2020

Preprint

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The ability to recognize the structural components of words, known as morphological processing, was recently associated with the bilateral ventral white matter pathways, across different writing systems. However, it remains unclear whether these associations are specific to the context of reading. To shed light on this question, in the current study we investigated whether the ventral pathways are associated with morphological processing in an oral word production task that does not involve reading. Forty-five participants completed a morphemebased fluency task in Hebrew, as well as diffusion MRI (dMRI) scans. We used probabilistic tractography to segment the major ventral and dorsal white matter pathways, and assessed the correlations between their microstructural properties and performance on the morpheme-based fluency task. We found significant correlations between morpheme-based fluency and properties of the bilateral ventral tracts, suggesting that the involvement of these tracts in morphological processing extends beyond the reading modality. In addition, significant correlations were found in the frontal aslant tract (FAT), a dorsal tract associated with oral fluency and speech production. Together, our findings emphasize that neurocognitive associations reflect both the cognitive construct under investigation as well as the task used for its assessment. Lastly, to elucidate the biological factors underlying these correlations, we incorporated the composite hindered and restricted model of diffusion (CHARMED) framework, measured in independent scans. We found that only some of our findings could be attributed to variation in a CHARMEDbased estimate of fiber density. Further, we were able to uncover additional correlations that could not be detected using traditional dMRI indices. In sum, our results show that the involvement of the ventral tracts in morphological processing extends to the production domain, and demonstrate the added value of including sensitive structural measurements in neurocognitive investigations.

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Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 52%

Section: Morpheme-based Fluency Is Associated With Ventral and Dorsalmentioning

confidence: 94%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A general role for ventral white matter pathways in morphological processing: going beyond reading

Yablonski

Menashe

Ben-Shachar

2020

Preprint

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“…Certain environmental and family-related factors have also been strongly linked with reading development, particularly those related to socioeconomic status [38][39][40] . Research has repeatedly shown the critical impact of socioeconomic status on language and reading development 38,41,42 . From early childhood, significant disparities in vocabulary knowledge have been observed when comparing children from high versus low socioeconomic backgrounds 43,44 .…”

Section: Environmental Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multifactorial pathways facilitate resilience among kindergarteners at risk for dyslexia: A longitudinal behavioral and neuroimaging study

Zuk

Dunstan

Norton³

et al. 2019

Preprint

Self Cite

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ABSTRACTRecent efforts have focused on screening methods to identify children at risk for dyslexia as early as preschool/kindergarten. Unfortunately, while low sensitivity leads to under-identification of at-risk children, low specificity can lead to over-identification, resulting in inaccurate allocation of limited educational resources. The present study focused on children identified as at-risk in kindergarten who do not subsequently develop dyslexia to specify factors associated with better reading outcomes among at-risk children. Early screening was conducted in kindergarten and a subset of children was tracked longitudinally until second grade. Potential protective factors were evaluated at cognitive-linguistic, environmental, and neural levels. Relative to at-risk kindergarteners who subsequently developed dyslexia, those who did not were characterized by significantly higher socioeconomic status (SES), speech production accuracy, and microstructure of the posterior right-hemispheric superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF). A positive association between microstructure of the right SLF and subsequent decoding skills was found to be specific to at-risk children and not observed among typical controls. Among at-risk children, several kindergarten-age factors were found to significantly contribute to the prediction of subsequent decoding skills: microstructure of the posterior right SLF, age, gender, SES, and phonological awareness. These findings suggest that putative compensatory mechanisms are already present by the start of kindergarten. The right SLF, in conjunction with the cognitive-linguistic and socioeconomic factors identified, may play an important role in facilitating reading development among at-risk children. This study has important implications for approaches to early screening, and assessment strategies for at-risk children.

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“…Regional white matter DTI has been correlated to language ability and pre-reading skills in younger ''pre-readers'' (Saygin et al, 2013;Vandermosten et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2017;Dodson et al, 2018;Vanderauwera et al, 2018;Walton et al, 2018;Ozernov-Palchik et al, 2019;Hutton et al, 2020), and even in infants with a family history of developmental dyslexia (Langer et al, 2017). Longitudinal DTI has shown that both baseline values and changes of diffusion parameters between scans predict future reading ability in healthy controls (Hoeft et al, 2011;Yeatman et al, 2012;Myers et al, 2014;Gullick and Booth, 2015;Takeuchi et al, 2016;Vanderauwera et al, 2017;Borchers et al, 2019;Bruckert et al, 2019;Lebel et al, 2019) and in neurodevelopmental disorders such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (Treit et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Myelin Water Imaging Demonstrates Lower Brain Myelination in Children and Adolescents With Poor Reading Ability

Beaulieu

Yip

Low

et al. 2020

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides a means to non-invasively investigate the neurological links with dyslexia, a learning disability that affects one's ability to read. Most previous brain MRI studies of dyslexia and reading skill have used structural or diffusion imaging to reveal regional brain abnormalities. However, volumetric and diffusion MRI lack specificity in their interpretation at the microstructural level. Myelin is a critical neural component for brain function and plasticity, and as such, deficits in myelin may impact reading ability. MRI can estimate myelin using myelin water fraction (MWF) imaging, which is based on evaluation of the proportion of short T2 myelin-associated water from multiexponential T2 relaxation analysis, but has not yet been applied to the study of reading or dyslexia. In this study, MWF MRI, intelligence, and reading assessments were acquired in 20 participants aged 10-18 years with a wide range of reading ability to investigate the relationship between reading ability and myelination. Group comparisons showed markedly lower MWF by 16-69% in poor readers relative to good readers in the left and right thalamus, as well as the left posterior limb of the internal capsule, left/right anterior limb of the internal capsule, left/right centrum semiovale, and splenium of the corpus callosum. MWF over the entire group also correlated positively with three different reading scores in the bilateral thalamus as well as white matter, including the splenium of the corpus callosum, left posterior limb of the internal capsule, left anterior limb of the internal capsule, and left centrum semiovale. MWF imaging from T2 relaxation suggests that myelination, particularly in the bilateral thalamus, splenium, and left hemisphere white matter, plays a role in reading abilities. Myelin water imaging thus provides a potentially valuable in vivo imaging tool for the study of dyslexia and its remediation.

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The relationship between socioeconomic status and white matter microstructure in pre‐reading children: A longitudinal investigation

Cited by 68 publications

References 144 publications

A general role for ventral white matter pathways in morphological processing: going beyond reading

A general role for ventral white matter pathways in morphological processing: going beyond reading

Multifactorial pathways facilitate resilience among kindergarteners at risk for dyslexia: A longitudinal behavioral and neuroimaging study

Myelin Water Imaging Demonstrates Lower Brain Myelination in Children and Adolescents With Poor Reading Ability

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