Psychology Department, University of Rochester, 500 Joseph C Wilson Blvd, Rochester, NY 14627, USA; MEG Center, Department of Neurology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, 3333 Burnet Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45220, USA.
Department of Neurology, Nanjing Brain Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Jiangsu, China.
Int J Psychophysiol. 2018 Jun;128:7-21. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2018.03.016. Epub 2018 Mar 23.
The brain undergoes enormous changes during childhood. Little is known about how the brain develops to serve word processing. The objective of the present study was to investigate the maturational changes of word processing in children and adolescents using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Responses to a word processing task were investigated in sixty healthy participants. Each participant was presented with simultaneous visual and auditory word pairs in "match" and "mismatch" conditions. The patterns of neuromagnetic activation from MEG recordings were analyzed at both sensor and source levels. Topography and source imaging revealed that word processing transitioned from bilateral connections to unilateral connections as age increased from 6 to 17 years old. Correlation analyses of language networks revealed that the path length of word processing networks negatively correlated with age (r = -0.833, p < 0.0001), while the connection strength (r = 0.541, p < 0.01) and the clustering coefficient (r = 0.705, p < 0.001) of word processing networks were positively correlated with age. In addition, males had more visual connections, whereas females had more auditory connections. The correlations between gender and path length, gender and connection strength, and gender and clustering coefficient demonstrated a developmental trend without reaching statistical significance. The results indicate that the developmental trajectory of word processing is gender specific. Since the neuromagnetic signatures of these gender-specific paths to adult word processing were determined using non-invasive, objective, and quantitative methods, the results may play a key role in understanding language impairments in pediatric patients in the future.
大脑在儿童期经历巨大变化。对于大脑如何发育以进行文字处理知之甚少。本研究旨在使用脑磁图（MEG）研究儿童和青少年文字处理的成熟变化。研究了 60 名健康参与者对文字处理任务的反应。每个参与者都同时呈现视觉和听觉单词对，处于“匹配”和“不匹配”条件下。从 MEG 记录的神经磁激活模式在传感器和源水平进行了分析。地形和源成像显示，随着年龄从 6 岁增加到 17 岁，文字处理从双侧连接过渡到单侧连接。语言网络的相关分析显示，文字处理网络的路径长度与年龄呈负相关（r=−0.833，p<0.0001），而文字处理网络的连接强度（r=0.541，p<0.01）和聚类系数（r=0.705，p<0.001）与年龄呈正相关。此外，男性有更多的视觉连接，而女性有更多的听觉连接。性别与路径长度、性别与连接强度以及性别与聚类系数之间的相关性显示出一种发展趋势，但没有达到统计学意义。研究结果表明，文字处理的发展轨迹是具有性别特异性的。由于使用非侵入性、客观和定量的方法确定了这些性别特异性通往成人文字处理的神经磁特征，因此这些结果可能在未来理解儿科患者的语言障碍方面发挥关键作用。
