Neural organization of ventral white matter tracts parallels the initial steps of reading development
Brain and Language. 2018-08-01; 183: 32-40
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2018.05.007
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Insight in the developmental trajectory of the neuroanatomical reading correlates
is important to understand related cognitive processes and disorders. In adults,
a dual pathway model has been suggested encompassing a dorsal phonological and a
ventral orthographic white matter system. This dichotomy seems not present in
pre-readers, and the specific role of ventral white matter in reading remains
unclear. Therefore, the present longitudinal study investigated the relation
between ventral white matter and cognitive processes underlying reading in
children with a broad range of reading skills (n = 61). Ventral pathways of the
reading network were manually traced using diffusion tractography: the inferior
fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and
uncinate fasciculus (UF). Pathways were examined pre-reading (5-6 years) and
after two years of reading acquisition (7-8 years). Dimension reduction for the
cognitive measures resulted in one component for pre-reading cognitive measures
and a separate phonological and orthographic component for the early reading
measures. Regression analyses revealed a relation between the pre-reading
cognitive component and bilateral IFOF and left ILF. Interestingly, exclusively
the left IFOF was related to the orthographic component, whereas none of the
pathways was related to the phonological component. Hence, the left IFOF seems to
serve as the lexical reading route, already in the earliest reading stages.
Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2018.05.007
PMID: 29783124 [Indexed for MEDLINE]