White Matter Alterations in Infants at Risk for Developmental Dyslexia

Langer, Nicolas; Peysakhovich, Barbara; Zuk, Jennifer; Drottar, Marie; Sliva, Danielle D.; Smith, Sara A.; Becker, Bryce L. C.; Grant, P. Ellen; Gaab, Nadine

doi:10.1093/cercor/bhv281

Cited by 96 publications

(129 citation statements)

References 97 publications

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“…This finding is unexpected, as previous studies reported reduced FA in dyslexia and positive correlations with reading measures (Beaulieu et al, 2005;Deutsch et al, 2005;Lebel et al, 2013;Steinbrink et al, 2008). Recent tractography studies also showed lower FA in pre-reading children at family risk for dyslexia (Langer et al, 2017;Vanderauwera et al, 2017;Vandermosten et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2017), which is again not in line with our findings. These studies, however, relied on different age groups, tractography algorithms and tract quantification techniques, which makes a direct comparison with the current findings rather difficult.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 94%

White matter alterations and tract lateralization in children with dyslexia and isolated spelling deficits

Banfi

Koschutnig

Moll

et al. 2018

Human Brain Mapping

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The present study investigated whether children with a typical dyslexia profile and children with isolated spelling deficits show a distinct pattern of white matter alteration compared with typically developing peers. Relevant studies on the topic are scarce, rely on small samples, and often suffer from the limitations of conventional tensor‐based methods. The present Constrained Spherical Deconvolution study includes 27 children with typical reading and spelling skills, 21 children with dyslexia and 21 children with isolated spelling deficits. Group differences along major white matter tracts were quantified utilizing the Automated Fiber Quantification software and a lateralization index was calculated in order to investigate the structural asymmetry of the tracts. The two deficit groups mostly displayed different patterns of white matter alterations, located in the bilateral inferior longitudinal fasciculi, right superior longitudinal fasciculus, and cingulum for the group with dyslexia and in the left arcuate fasciculus for the group with isolated spelling deficits. The two deficit groups differed also with respect to structural asymmetry. Children with dyslexia did not show the typical leftward asymmetry of the arcuate fasciculus, whereas the group with isolated spelling deficits showed absent rightward asymmetry of the inferior fronto‐occipital fasciculus. This study adds evidence to the notion that different profiles of combined or isolated reading and spelling deficits are associated with different neural signatures.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 94%

White matter alterations and tract lateralization in children with dyslexia and isolated spelling deficits

Banfi

Koschutnig

Moll

et al. 2018

Human Brain Mapping

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“…Deciphering amongst these possibilities cannot be achieved in observational and correlational studies, and is instead likely to require studies that are designed to directly manipulate the learning environment of the developing child (Keller and Just 2009; Webb et al 2015). Nevertheless, the present findings have important implications for prior developmental studies of pre-readers and early readers that have observed white matter differences in the context of identifying predictive biomarkers of reading impairments in samples of children with specific behavioral or familial risk factors for reading disorders (Saygin et al 2013; Myers et al 2014; Langer et al 2015; Vanderauwera et al 2015; Vandermosten et al 2015). Our findings show that differences in white matter structure can also be explained by whether children have acquired specific abilities for reading.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

White matter properties differ in 6-year old Readers and Pre-readers

et al. 2016

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Reading, an essential life skill in modern society, is typically learned during childhood. Adults who can read show white matter differences compared to adults who never learned to read. Studies have not established whether children who can read show similar white matter differences compared to children who cannot read. We compared 6-year old children who could decode written English words and pseudowords (n=31; Readers) and 6-year old children who could not decode pseudowords and had a standard score < 100 on a task for reading single words (n=11; Pre-Readers). We employed diffusion MRI and tractography to extract fractional anisotropy (FA) along the trajectory of 6 bilateral intra-hemispheric tracts and 2 posterior subdivisions of the corpus callosum. Readers demonstrated significantly increased FA within the left anterior segment of the superior longitudinal fasciculus (aSLF-L) and the right uncinate fasciculus (UF-R) compared to Pre-Readers. FA in the aSLF-L was significantly correlated with phonological awareness; FA in the UF-R was significantly correlated with language. Correlations in the UF-R but not the aSLF-L remained significant after controlling for reading ability, revealing that UF-R group differences were related to both children's language and reading abilities. Taken together, these findings demonstrate new evidence showing that individual differences in white matter structure relate to whether children have begun to read.

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“…Here, we show that even at the onset of reading acquisition (and in contrast to Turkeltaub et al., ), reading skill correlates with the magnitude of word‐specific brain activation in the left vOT cortex, reinforcing the evidence that specialization for print in this region emerges with higher reading expertise. Although studies diverge on the concept of contribution of this area to nonreading tasks, they converge on an idea that it is generally involved in expert perception (Price & Devlin, ), including visual word processing (Langer et al., ). As predicted, literacy acquisition allows the left‐hemispheric spoken language network to be activated by print because correlation was also observed in language processing LH areas including inferior frontal, temporal and temporo‐parietal areas.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prereader to beginning reader: changes induced by reading acquisition in print and speech brain networks

Chyl

Kossowski

Dębska

et al. 2017

Child Psychology Psychiatry

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Background: Literacy acquisition is a demanding process that induces significant changes in the brain, especially in the spoken and written language networks. Nevertheless, large-scale paediatric fMRI studies are still limited. Methods: We analyzed fMRI data to show how individual differences in reading performance correlate with brain activation for speech and print in 111 children attending kindergarten or first grade and examined group differences between a matched subset of emergent-readers and prereaders. Results: Across the entire cohort, individual differences analysis revealed that reading skill was positively correlated with the magnitude of activation difference between words and symbol strings in left superior temporal, inferior frontal and fusiform gyri. Group comparisons of the matched subset of pre-and emergent-readers showed higher activity for emergent-readers in left inferior frontal, precentral, and postcentral gyri. Individual differences in activation for natural versus vocoded speech were also positively correlated with reading skill, primarily in the left temporal cortex. However, in contrast to studies on adult illiterates, group comparisons revealed higher activity in prereaders compared to readers in the frontal lobes. Print-speech coactivation was observed only in readers and individual differences analyses revealed a positive correlation between convergence and reading skill in the left superior temporal sulcus. Conclusions: These results emphasise that a child's brain undergoes several modifications to both visual and oral language systems in the process of learning to read. They also suggest that print-speech convergence is a hallmark of acquiring literacy.

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White Matter Alterations in Infants at Risk for Developmental Dyslexia

Cited by 96 publications

References 97 publications

White matter alterations and tract lateralization in children with dyslexia and isolated spelling deficits

White matter alterations and tract lateralization in children with dyslexia and isolated spelling deficits

White matter properties differ in 6-year old Readers and Pre-readers

Prereader to beginning reader: changes induced by reading acquisition in print and speech brain networks

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