Lou Chenglin, Cross Alexandra M, Peters Lien, Ansari Daniel, Joanisse Marc F
Department of Special Education, Peabody College of Education, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
Netw Neurosci. 2024 Dec 10;8(4):1507-1528. doi: 10.1162/netn_a_00414. eCollection 2024.
We examined how thalamocortical connectivity structure reflects children's reading performance. Diffusion-weighted MRI at 3 T and a series of reading measures were collected from 64 children (33 girls) ages 8-14 years with and without dyslexia. The topological properties of the left and right thalamus were computed based on the whole-brain white matter network and a hub-attached reading network, and were correlated with scores on several tests of children's reading and reading-related abilities. Significant correlations between topological metrics of the left thalamus and reading scores were observed only in the hub-attached reading network. Local efficiency was negatively correlated with rapid automatized naming. Transmission cost was positively correlated with phonemic decoding, and this correlation was independent of network efficiency scores; follow-up analyses further demonstrated that this effect was specific to the pulvinar and mediodorsal nuclei of the left thalamus. We validated these results using an independent dataset and demonstrated that that the relationship between thalamic connectivity and phonemic decoding was specifically robust. Overall, the results highlight the role of the left thalamus and thalamocortical network in understanding the neurocognitive bases of skilled reading and dyslexia in children.
我们研究了丘脑皮质连接结构如何反映儿童的阅读表现。对64名8至14岁有和没有阅读障碍的儿童（33名女孩）进行了3T的扩散加权磁共振成像和一系列阅读测试。基于全脑白质网络和一个与枢纽相连的阅读网络计算左右丘脑的拓扑特性，并将其与儿童阅读及阅读相关能力的多项测试分数相关联。仅在与枢纽相连的阅读网络中观察到左丘脑拓扑指标与阅读分数之间存在显著相关性。局部效率与快速自动命名呈负相关。传输成本与音素解码呈正相关，且这种相关性独立于网络效率分数；后续分析进一步表明，这种效应特定于左丘脑的枕核和背内侧核。我们使用独立数据集验证了这些结果，并证明丘脑连接与音素解码之间的关系特别稳健。总体而言，结果突出了左丘脑和丘脑皮质网络在理解儿童熟练阅读和阅读障碍的神经认知基础中的作用。
