Primary education is the incubator for learning academic skills that help children to become a literate, communicative, and independent person. Over this learning period, nonlinear and regional changes in the brain occur, but how these changes relate to academic performance, such as reading ability, is still unclear. In the current study, we analyzed longitudinal T1 MRI data of 41 children in order to investigate typical cortical development during the early reading stage (end of kindergarten–end of grade 2) and advanced reading stage (end of grade 2–middle of grade 5), and to detect putative deviant trajectories in children with dyslexia. The structural brain change was quantified with a reliable measure that directly calculates the local morphological differences between brain images of two time points, while considering the global head growth. When applying this measure to investigate typical cortical development, we observed that left temporal and temporoparietal regions belonging to the reading network exhibited an increase during the early reading stage and stabilized during the advanced reading stage. This suggests that the natural plasticity window for reading is within the first years of primary school, hence earlier than the typical period for reading intervention. Concerning neurotrajectories in children with dyslexia compared to typical readers, we observed no differences in gray matter development of the left reading network, but we found different neurotrajectories in right IFG opercularis (during the early reading stage) and in right isthmus cingulate (during the advanced reading stage), which could reflect compensatory neural mechanisms.

中文翻译：

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阅读发展过程中的结构性大脑动力学：从幼儿园到五年级的纵向 MRI 研究

小学教育是学习学术技能的孵化器，帮助孩子成为有文化、善于交际和独立的人。在这个学习期间，大脑会发生非线性和区域性的变化，但这些变化与学习成绩（例如阅读能力）之间的关系仍不清楚。在目前的研究中，我们分析了 41 名儿童的纵向 T1 MRI 数据，以调查早期阅读阶段（幼儿园结束 - 2 年级结束）和高级阅读阶段（2 年级结束 - 5 年级中期）的典型皮质发育)，并检测阅读障碍儿童的假定异常轨迹。结构性大脑变化通过一种可靠的测量方法进行量化，该测量方法直接计算两个时间点的大脑图像之间的局部形态差异，同时考虑全局头部生长。当应用这一措施来研究典型的皮层发育时，我们观察到属于阅读网络的左侧颞叶和颞顶叶区域在早期阅读阶段表现出增加，并在高级阅读阶段趋于稳定。这表明阅读的自然可塑性窗口在小学一年级之内，因此早于阅读干预的典型时期。关于阅读障碍儿童与典型阅读者相比的神经轨迹，我们观察到左侧阅读网络的灰质发育没有差异，但我们发现右侧 IFG 岛盖（在早期阅读阶段）和右侧扣带峡部（在高级阅读阶段）的神经轨迹不同阅读阶段），这可以反映代偿性神经机制。