Zhang Lihuan, Hu Jiali, Liu Xin, Nichols Emily S, Lu Chunming, Liu Li
State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Faculty of Education, Western University, London, ON, Canada.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2021 Jan 18;14:611008. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2020.611008. eCollection 2020.
Reading disability has been considered as a disconnection syndrome. Recently, an increasing number of studies have emphasized the role of subcortical regions in reading. However, the majority of research on reading disability has focused on the connections amongst brain regions within the classic cortical reading network. Here, we used graph theoretical analysis to investigate whether subcortical regions serve as hubs (regions highly connected with other brain regions) during reading both in Chinese children with reading disability ( = 15, age ranging from 11.03 to 13.08 years) and in age-matched typically developing children ( = 16, age ranging from 11.17 to 12.75 years) using a visual rhyming judgment task and a visual meaning judgment task. We found that the bilateral thalami were the unique hubs for typically developing children across both tasks. Additionally, subcortical regions (right putamen, left pallidum) were also unique hubs for typically developing children but only in the rhyming task. Among these subcortical hub regions, the left pallidum showed reduced connectivity with inferior frontal regions in the rhyming judgment but not semantic task in reading disabled compared with typically developing children. These results suggest that subcortical-cortical disconnection, which may be particularly relevant to the phonological and phonology-related learning process, may be associated with Chinese reading disability.
阅读障碍一直被视为一种连接障碍综合征。最近，越来越多的研究强调了皮质下区域在阅读中的作用。然而，大多数关于阅读障碍的研究都集中在经典皮质阅读网络内脑区之间的连接上。在此，我们使用图论分析来研究在中国阅读障碍儿童（n = 15，年龄范围为11.03至13.08岁）和年龄匹配的发育正常儿童（n = 16，年龄范围为11.17至12.75岁）中，在使用视觉押韵判断任务和视觉语义判断任务进行阅读时，皮质下区域是否作为枢纽（与其他脑区高度连接的区域）。我们发现，双侧丘脑是发育正常儿童在两项任务中的独特枢纽。此外，皮质下区域（右侧壳核、左侧苍白球）也是发育正常儿童的独特枢纽，但仅在押韵任务中如此。在这些皮质下枢纽区域中，与发育正常儿童相比，阅读障碍儿童在押韵判断而非语义任务中，左侧苍白球与额下回的连接性降低。这些结果表明，皮质下-皮质连接障碍，这可能与语音及与语音相关的学习过程特别相关，可能与中文阅读障碍有关。
