State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
School of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
Eur J Neurosci. 2022 Feb;55(3):806-826. doi: 10.1111/ejn.15597. Epub 2022 Jan 31.
Effortless print-sound integration is essential to reading development, and the superior temporal cortex (STC) is the most critical brain region. However, to date, the conclusion is almost restricted to alphabetic orthographies. To examine the neural basis in non-alphabetic languages and its relationship with reading abilities, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in typically developing Chinese children. Two neuroimaging-based indicators of audiovisual processing-additive enhancement (higher activation in the congruent than the average activation of unimodal conditions) and neural integration (different activations between the congruent versus incongruent conditions)-were used to investigate character-sounds (opaque) and pinyin-sounds (transparent) processing. We found additive enhancement in bilateral STCs processing both character and pinyin stimulations. Moreover, the neural integrations in the left STC for the two scripts were strongly correlated. In terms of differentiation, first, areas beyond the STCs also showed additive enhancement in processing pinyin-sounds. Second, while the bilateral STCs, left inferior/middle frontal and parietal regions manifested a striking neural integration (incongruent > congruent) for character-sounds, no significant clusters were revealed for pinyin-sounds. Finally, the neural integration in the left middle frontal gyrus for characters was specifically associated with silent reading comprehension proficiency, indicating automatic semantic processing during implicit character-sound integration. In contrast, the neural integration in the left STC for pinyin was specifically associated with oral reading fluency that relies on grapho-phonological mapping. To summarize, this study revealed both script-universal and script-specific neurofunctional substrates of print-sound integration as well as their processing- and region-dependent associations with reading abilities in typical Chinese children.
轻松实现视听整合对阅读发展至关重要，而优势颞区（STC）是最关键的大脑区域。然而，迄今为止，这一结论几乎仅限于表音文字系统。为了检验非表音文字系统中的神经基础及其与阅读能力的关系，我们对典型发展的中国儿童进行了一项功能磁共振成像研究。我们使用了两种基于神经影像学的视听处理指标——加性增强（同调条件下的激活高于平均激活）和神经整合（同调与非同调条件下的不同激活）——来研究字符声音（不透明）和拼音声音（透明）的处理。我们发现双侧 STC 在处理字符和拼音刺激时都表现出加性增强。此外，这两种脚本在左 STC 中的神经整合高度相关。在分化方面，首先，除 STC 之外的区域在处理拼音声音时也表现出加性增强。其次，虽然双侧 STC、左侧额中回和顶叶区域在处理字符声音时表现出显著的神经整合（非同调>同调），但在处理拼音声音时没有明显的集群。最后，左额中回对字符的神经整合与默读理解能力高度相关，表明在隐式字符声音整合过程中存在自动语义处理。相比之下，左 STC 对拼音的神经整合与依赖于字形-语音映射的口语阅读流畅度高度相关。总之，本研究揭示了阅读发展中视听整合的普遍和特定的神经功能基础，以及它们与中国儿童阅读能力的处理和区域依赖性关联。
