The importance of (inherited) genetic impact in reading development is well established. De novo mutation is another important contributor that is recently gathering interest as a major liability of neurodevelopmental disorders, but has been neglected in reading research to date. Paternal age at childbirth (PatAGE) is known as the most prominent risk factor for de novo mutation, which has been repeatedly shown by molecular genetic studies. As one of the first efforts, we performed a preliminary investigation of the relationship between PatAGE, offspring's reading, and brain structure in a longitudinal neuroimaging study following 51 children from kindergarten through third grade. The results showed that greater PatAGE was significantly associated with worse reading, explaining an additional 9.5% of the variance after controlling for a number of confounds—including familial factors and cognitive-linguistic reading precursors. Moreover, this effect was mediated by volumetric maturation of the left posterior thalamus from ages 5 to 8. Complementary analyses indicated the PatAGE-related thalamic region was most likely located in the pulvinar nuclei and related to the dorsal attention network by using brain atlases, public datasets, and offspring's diffusion imaging data. Altogether, these findings provide novel insights into neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the PatAGE effect on reading acquisition during its earliest phase and suggest promising areas of future research.

中文翻译：

---

丘脑发育介导父亲年龄对后代阅读的影响：初步调查

（遗传的）遗传影响在阅读发展中的重要性已经确立。从头突变是另一个重要的贡献者，它最近作为神经发育障碍的主要责任引起了人们的兴趣，但迄今为止在阅读研究中一直被忽视。父亲分娩年龄 ( PatAGE ) 被认为是新生儿出生时最突出的风险因素突变，这已被分子遗传学研究反复证明。作为最初的努力之一，我们对 51 名从幼儿园到三年级的儿童进行了纵向神经影像学研究，对 PatAGE、后代阅读和大脑结构之间的关系进行了初步调查。结果表明，更大的 PatAGE 与较差的阅读显着相关，在控制了许多混淆因素（包括家庭因素和认知语言阅读前兆）后，解释了额外 9.5% 的方差。此外，这种效应是由 5 至 8 岁左后丘脑的体积成熟介导的。补充分析表明，通过使用脑图谱、公共数据集和后代的扩散成像数据，PatAGE 相关的丘脑区域最有可能位于枕核并与背侧注意网络相关。总而言之，这些发现为 PatAGE 对阅读习得早期影响的神经认知机制提供了新的见解，并提出了未来研究的有希望的领域。