State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Imaging and Connectomics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Cereb Cortex. 2018 May 1;28(5):1656-1672. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhx061.
Reading comprehension is a crucial reading skill for learning and putatively contains 2 key components: reading decoding and linguistic comprehension. Current understanding of the neural mechanism underlying these reading comprehension components is lacking, and whether and how neuroanatomical features can be used to predict these 2 skills remain largely unexplored. In the present study, we analyzed a large sample from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) dataset and successfully built multivariate predictive models for these 2 skills using whole-brain gray matter volume features. The results showed that these models effectively captured individual differences in these 2 skills and were able to significantly predict these components of reading comprehension for unseen individuals. The strict cross-validation using the HCP cohort and another independent cohort of children demonstrated the model generalizability. The identified gray matter regions contributing to the skill prediction consisted of a wide range of regions covering the putative reading, cerebellum, and subcortical systems. Interestingly, there were gender differences in the predictive models, with the female-specific model overestimating the males' abilities. Moreover, the identified contributing gray matter regions for the female-specific and male-specific models exhibited considerable differences, supporting a gender-dependent neuroanatomical substrate for reading comprehension.
阅读理解是学习的一项关键阅读技能，包含两个关键组成部分：阅读解码和语言理解。目前对于这两个阅读理解成分的神经机制理解不足，并且神经解剖学特征是否以及如何可以用于预测这两种技能在很大程度上仍未得到探索。在本研究中，我们分析了来自人类连接组计划（HCP）数据集的一个大样本，并使用全脑灰质体积特征成功为这两种技能构建了多元预测模型。结果表明，这些模型有效地捕获了这两种技能的个体差异，并能够显著预测未观察个体的阅读理解的这些成分。使用 HCP 队列和另一个儿童独立队列进行的严格交叉验证表明了模型的通用性。对有助于技能预测的灰质区域进行了鉴定，这些区域包括了涵盖假定的阅读、小脑和皮质下系统的广泛区域。有趣的是，在预测模型中存在性别差异，女性特有的模型高估了男性的能力。此外，女性特有的和男性特有的模型所识别的有助于模型的灰质区域存在相当大的差异，支持了阅读理解的性别依赖的神经解剖学基础。
