Bathelt Joe, Rastle Kathleen, Taylor J S H
Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, UK.
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Neurobiol Lang (Camb). 2024 Jun 14;5(2):589-607. doi: 10.1162/nol_a_00146. eCollection 2024.
In computational models of reading, written words can be read using print-to-sound and/or print-to-meaning pathways. Neuroimaging data associate dorsal stream regions (left posterior occipitotemporal cortex, intraparietal cortex, dorsal inferior frontal gyrus [dIFG]) with the print-to-sound pathway and ventral stream regions (left anterior fusiform gyrus, middle temporal gyrus) with the print-to-meaning pathway. In 69 typical adults, we investigated whether resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) between the visual word form area (VWFA) and dorsal and ventral regions correlated with phonological (nonword reading, nonword repetition, spoonerisms), lexical-semantic (vocabulary, sensitivity to morpheme units in reading), and general literacy (word reading, spelling) skills. VWFA activity was temporally correlated with activity in both dorsal and ventral reading regions. In pre-registered whole-brain analyses, spoonerisms performance was positively correlated with RSFC between the VWFA and left dorsal regions (dIFG, superior parietal and intraparietal cortex). In exploratory region-of-interest analyses, VWFA-dIFG connectivity was also positively correlated with nonword repetition, spelling, and vocabulary. Connectivity between the VWFA and ventral stream regions was not associated with performance on any behavioural measure, either in whole-brain or region-of-interest analyses. Our results suggest that tasks such as spoonerisms and spellings, which are both complex (i.e., involve multiple subprocesses) and have high between-subject variability, provide greater opportunity for observing resting-state brain-behaviour associations. However, the complexity of these tasks limits the conclusions we can draw about the specific mechanisms that drive these associations. Future research would benefit from constructing latent variables from multiple tasks tapping the same reading subprocess.
在阅读的计算模型中，书面文字可以通过印刷到声音和/或印刷到意义的途径来读取。神经影像学数据将背侧流区域（左后枕颞叶皮层、顶内皮层、背侧额下回 [dIFG]）与印刷到声音的途径相关联，而腹侧流区域（左前梭状回、颞中回）与印刷到意义的途径相关联。在69名典型成年人中，我们研究了视觉词形区（VWFA）与背侧和腹侧区域之间的静息态功能连接（RSFC）是否与语音（非词阅读、非词重复、首音互换）、词汇语义（词汇、阅读中对词素单位的敏感度）和一般读写能力（单词阅读、拼写）技能相关。VWFA的活动在时间上与背侧和腹侧阅读区域的活动相关。在预先注册的全脑分析中，首音互换表现与VWFA和左背侧区域（dIFG、顶上叶和顶内皮层）之间的RSFC呈正相关。在探索性的感兴趣区域分析中，VWFA-dIFG连接也与非词重复、拼写和词汇呈正相关。无论是在全脑分析还是感兴趣区域分析中，VWFA与腹侧流区域之间的连接都与任何行为测量的表现无关。我们的结果表明，诸如首音互换和拼写等任务既复杂（即涉及多个子过程）且个体间差异较大，为观察静息态脑-行为关联提供了更大的机会。然而，这些任务的复杂性限制了我们对驱动这些关联的具体机制所能得出的结论。未来的研究将受益于从多个利用相同阅读子过程的任务中构建潜在变量。
