Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States; Institute of Education and Child Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands; Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, United States.
Neuroimage. 2020 Nov 1;221:117202. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117202. Epub 2020 Jul 28.
There are vast individual differences in reading achievement between students. Besides structural and functional variability in domain-specific brain regions, these differences may partially be explained by the organization of domain-general functional brain networks. In the current study we used resting-state functional MRI data from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort (PNC; N = 553; ages 8-22) to examine the relation between performance on a well-validated reading assessment task, the Wide Range Achievement Word Reading Test (WRAT-Reading) and patterns of functional connectivity. We focused specifically on functional connectivity within and between networks associated with cognitive control, and investigated whether the relationship with academic test performance was mediated by cognitive control abilities. We show that individuals with higher scores on the WRAT-Reading, have stronger lateralization in frontoparietal networks, increased functional connectivity between dorsal striatum and the dorsal attention network, and reduced functional connectivity between dorsal and ventral striatum. The relationship between functional connectivity and reading performance was mediated by cognitive control abilities (i.e., performance on a composite measure of executive function and complex cognition), but not by abilities in other domains, demonstrating the specificity of our findings. Finally, there were no significant interactions with age, suggesting that the observed brain-behavior relationships stay relatively stable over the course of development. Our findings provide important insights into the functional significance of inter-individual variability in the network architecture of the developing brain, showing that functional connectivity in domain-general control networks is relevant to academic achievement in the reading domain.
学生在阅读成绩方面存在巨大的个体差异。除了特定领域大脑区域的结构和功能变异性外，这些差异可能部分可以通过领域一般性功能大脑网络的组织来解释。在当前的研究中，我们使用了费城神经发育队列（PNC；N=553；年龄 8-22 岁）的静息态功能磁共振成像数据，来研究在一项经过充分验证的阅读评估任务（广泛阅读成就测试-WRAT-Reading）中的表现与功能连接模式之间的关系。我们特别关注与认知控制相关的网络内和网络间的功能连接，并研究与学业测试成绩的关系是否由认知控制能力中介。我们发现，WRAT-Reading 得分较高的个体，在前顶叶网络中存在更强的侧化，背侧纹状体与背侧注意网络之间的功能连接增加，背侧和腹侧纹状体之间的功能连接减少。功能连接与阅读成绩之间的关系受认知控制能力（即执行功能和复杂认知的综合测量表现）的中介，但不受其他领域能力的影响，这表明我们的发现具有特异性。最后，与年龄没有显著的相互作用，这表明观察到的大脑-行为关系在整个发育过程中相对稳定。我们的研究结果为个体间大脑网络结构差异的功能意义提供了重要的见解，表明领域一般性控制网络中的功能连接与阅读领域的学业成绩有关。
