Abnormal fMRI connectivity in children with dyslexia during a phoneme task: Before but not after treatment

doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2007.07.002

Journal of Neurolinguistics

Volume 21, Issue 4, July 2008, Pages 294-304

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2007.07.002 Get rights and content

Abstract

Brains of 18 children with dyslexia (5 girls, 13 boys) and 21 without dyslexia (8 girls, 13 boys) were scanned before and after the children with dyslexia received instructional treatment. Both at Time 1 and Time 2 all children performed an fMRI phoneme mapping task during brain scanning—deciding whether letter(s) in pair of pronounceable nonwords could stand for the same sound. Results were analyzed with a seed point correlational method for functional connectivity from four seed points based on prior studies: inferior frontal gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, the occipital region, and cerebellum. At Time 1 before treatment, a significant difference in fMRI connectivity occurred between children with dyslexia and normal reading controls in the left inferior frontal gyrus and its correlations with right and left middle frontal gyrus, right and left supplemental motor area, left precentral gyrus, and right superior frontal gyrus. There were no significant differences for the seed regions placed in the middle frontal gyrus, occipital gyrus or cerebellum. Children with dyslexia had greater functional connectivity from the left inferior frontal gyrus seed point to the right inferior frontal gyrus than did the children without dyslexia. Compared to adults with and without dyslexia who differed in bilateral connectivity from inferior frontal gyrus on the same task, the children with and without dyslexia differed in left side connectivity from left inferior frontal gyrus. At Time 2 after treatment, the children with dyslexia, who had participated in a 3-week instructional program that provided explicit instruction in linguistic awareness, alphabetic principle (taught in a way to maximize temporal contiguity of grapheme–phoneme associations), decoding and spelling, and a writers’ workshop, did not differ from the children without dyslexia in any of the clusters in the group difference map identifying differences between dyslexics and good readers, showing that functional connectivity (and not just regions of interest) may normalize following instructional treatment.

Section snippets

New issue in functional brain imaging research

A variety of brain imaging tools have documented structural (MRI or DTI), chemical (MRSI), functional (rCBF, PET, fMRI), and temporal (EEG, ERP, MSI) differences between adults or children with dyslexia and good readers of comparable age (for a review, see Berninger & Richards, 2002). These structural and functional differences between dyslexics and good readers are often associated with phonological processing (Eckert et al., 2003; Eden et al., 2004; Fulbright et al., 1999; Horwitz, Rumsey, &

Functional connectivity studies of dyslexia

Functional connectivity is a powerful noninvasive technique used to investigate the distribution of neural networks in participants who are normal controls and who have well-characterized clinical disorders. In the first PET functional connectivity study of dyslexia, Horwitz et al. (1998) investigated the angular gyrus and its connections during phonological processing. They found lack of coherence between measurements in the angular gyrus and parieto-temporal regions, suggesting functional

Purpose of the current study

The purpose of this research is to extend previous research with children, which analyzed results using a traditional on–off paradigm (and focused on orthographic and morpheme mapping) (Richards, Aylward, Berninger et al., 2006), to conduct a functional connectivity analysis of the phoneme mapping task. The goal was to compare results of functional connectivity during phoneme mapping in children with the previously published results of functional connectivity during phoneme mapping in adults (

Participants

Eighteen children with dyslexia (5 girls, 13 boys) and 21 good readers and spellers (8 girls, 13 boys) participated in this study. The children with dyslexia were recruited from a family genetics study and met the research inclusion criteria for dyslexia (Berninger, Abbott, Thomson et al., 2001; Berninger et al., 2006): (a) Verbal IQ of at least 90 (top 75% of the population and less likely to be confounded with neurogenetic disorders that are more frequent in the lower quartile of the IQ

Time 1 before treatment

A significant difference in fMRI connectivity occurred between children with dyslexia and normal reading controls in the left inferior frontal gyrus and its correlations with right and left middle frontal gyrus, right and left supplemental motor area, left precentral gyrus, and right superior frontal gyrus. Table 1 shows the cluster table results for this group difference map. The clusters in Table 1 represent the areas of brain where there was a significant difference between dyslexics and

Discussion

The functional connectivity results reported here for children are the same as for adults in that the dyslexics and good readers differed for the seed region in the left inferior frontal gyrus, which may house an executive function for controlling the functional language system (Richards Aylward, Raskind et al., 2006). However, results were different for adults and children in the regions connected in time to this seed point. Stanberry et al. (2006) showed that the extent of the functional

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by a grant (P50 33812) from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

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Theoretical articleAbnormal fMRI connectivity in children with dyslexia during a phoneme task: Before but not after treatment

Abstract

Section snippets

New issue in functional brain imaging research

Functional connectivity studies of dyslexia

Purpose of the current study

Participants

Time 1 before treatment

Discussion

Acknowledgment

Neuroimage

Neuron

Neuroimage

Medical Image Analysis

Neuroimage

Journal of Neurolinguistics

American Journal of Human Genetics

Biological Psychiatry

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Brain and Language

Neuroimage

Instructional treatment associated with changes in brain activation in children with dyslexia

Neurology

Process assessment of the learner (PAL) test battery for reading and writing disabilities

PAL research supported reading and writing lessons

Processes underlying timing and fluency: Efficiency, automaticity, coordination, and morphological awareness

Language phenotype for reading and writing disability: A family approach

Scientific Studies in Reading

Modeling developmental phonological core deficits within a working memory architecture in children and adults with developmental dyslexia

Scientific Studies in Reading

Brain literacy for educators and psychologists

Implications of advancements in brain research and technology for writing development, writing instruction, and educational evolution

Shifts of effective connectivity within a language network during rhyming and spelling

Journal of Neuroscience

Theoretical links between naming speed, precise timing mechanisms, and orthographic skill in dyslexia

Reading and Writing. An International Journal

Theoretical article
Abnormal fMRI connectivity in children with dyslexia during a phoneme task: Before but not after treatment