Biotteau Maëlle, Péran Patrice, Vayssière Nathalie, Tallet Jessica, Albaret Jean-Michel, Chaix Yves
Toulouse NeuroImaging Center, Université de Toulouse, Inserm, UPS, France.
CerCo, UMR 5549 CNRS UPS, Toulouse, France.
Eur J Paediatr Neurol. 2017 Mar;21(2):286-299. doi: 10.1016/j.ejpn.2016.07.025. Epub 2016 Aug 12.
Recent theories hypothesize that procedural learning may support the frequent overlap between neurodevelopmental disorders. The neural circuitry supporting procedural learning includes, among others, cortico-cerebellar and cortico-striatal loops. Alteration of these loops may account for the frequent comorbidity between Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) and Developmental Dyslexia (DD). The aim of our study was to investigate cerebral changes due to the learning and automatization of a sequence learning task in children with DD, or DCD, or both disorders.
fMRI on 48 children (aged 8-12) with DD, DCD or DD + DCD was used to explore their brain activity during procedural tasks, performed either after two weeks of training or in the early stage of learning.
Firstly, our results indicate that all children were able to perform the task with the same level of automaticity, but recruit different brain processes to achieve the same performance. Secondly, our fMRI results do not appear to confirm Nicolson and Fawcett's model. The neural correlates recruited for procedural learning by the DD and the comorbid groups are very close, while the DCD group presents distinct characteristics. This provide a promising direction on the neural mechanisms associated with procedural learning in neurodevelopmental disorders and for understanding comorbidity.
近期理论推测，程序性学习可能是神经发育障碍之间频繁重叠的原因。支持程序性学习的神经回路包括皮质 - 小脑和皮质 - 纹状体环路等。这些环路的改变可能解释发育性协调障碍（DCD）和发育性阅读障碍（DD）之间的频繁共病现象。我们研究的目的是调查患有DD、DCD或两种疾病的儿童在序列学习任务的学习和自动化过程中大脑的变化。
对48名年龄在8至12岁之间患有DD、DCD或DD + DCD的儿童进行功能磁共振成像（fMRI），以探索他们在程序性任务期间的大脑活动，这些任务在经过两周训练后或在学习早期进行。
首先，我们的结果表明，所有儿童都能够以相同的自动化水平执行任务，但为实现相同表现会调用不同的大脑过程。其次，我们的fMRI结果似乎并未证实尼科尔森和福西特的模型。DD组和共病组在程序性学习中所涉及的神经关联非常接近，而DCD组呈现出不同的特征。这为神经发育障碍中与程序性学习相关的神经机制以及理解共病现象提供了一个有前景的方向。
