Meisler Steven L, Gabrieli John D E, Christodoulou Joanna A
Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States.
Imaging Neurosci (Camb). 2024;2. doi: 10.1162/imag_a_00108. Epub 2024 Feb 28.
Children's reading progress typically slows during extended breaks in formal education, such as summer vacations. This stagnation can be especially concerning for children with reading difficulties or disabilities, such as dyslexia, because of the potential to exacerbate the skills gap between them and their peers. Reading interventions can prevent skill loss and even lead to appreciable gains in reading ability during the summer. Longitudinal studies relating intervention response to brain changes can reveal educationally relevant insights into rapid learning-driven brain plasticity. The current work focused on reading outcomes and white matter connections, which enable communication among the brain regions required for proficient reading. We collected reading scores and diffusion-weighted images at the beginning and end of summer for 41 children with reading difficulties who had completed either 1st or 2nd grade. Children were randomly assigned to either receive an intensive reading intervention ( = 26; from Lindamood-Bell which emphasizes orthographic fluency) or be deferred to a wait-list group ( = 15), enabling us to analyze how white matter properties varied across a wide spectrum of skill development and regression trajectories. On average, the intervention group had larger gains in reading compared to the non-intervention group, who declined in reading scores. Improvements on a proximal measure of orthographic processing (but not other more distal reading measures) were associated with decreases in mean diffusivity within core reading brain circuitry (left arcuate fasciculus and left inferior longitudinal fasciculus) and increases in fractional anisotropy in the left corticospinal tract. Our findings suggest that responses to intensive reading instruction are related predominantly to white matter plasticity in tracts most associated with reading.
儿童的阅读进步在正规教育的长时间中断期间，比如暑假，通常会放缓。这种停滞对于有阅读困难或残疾的儿童，如诵读困难症患者，可能尤其令人担忧，因为这有可能加剧他们与同龄人之间的技能差距。阅读干预可以防止技能丧失，甚至在夏季提高阅读能力。将干预反应与大脑变化相关联的纵向研究，可以揭示与教育相关的见解，即快速学习驱动的大脑可塑性。目前的研究聚焦于阅读成果和白质连接，白质连接能使熟练阅读所需的大脑区域之间进行交流。我们在夏季开始和结束时收集了41名完成一年级或二年级学业的阅读困难儿童的阅读分数和扩散加权图像。儿童被随机分配接受强化阅读干预（ = 26；来自强调正字法流畅性的林达穆德-贝尔公司）或被推迟到等待名单组（ = 15），这使我们能够分析白质特性在广泛的技能发展和回归轨迹中的变化情况。平均而言，与阅读分数下降的非干预组相比，干预组在阅读方面有更大的进步。正字法处理的近端测量指标（而非其他更远端的阅读测量指标）的改善，与核心阅读脑回路（左弓状束和左下纵束）内平均扩散率的降低以及左侧皮质脊髓束中各向异性分数的增加有关。我们的研究结果表明，对强化阅读教学的反应主要与阅读最相关的脑区白质可塑性有关。
