Mitchell Jamie L, Yablonski Maya, Stone Hannah L, Fuentes-Jimenez Mia, Takada Megumi E, Tang Kenny A, Tran Jasmine E, Chou Clementine, Yeatman Jason D
Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
bioRxiv. 2025 Jan 15:2025.01.14.632854. doi: 10.1101/2025.01.14.632854.
Understanding the balance between plastic and persistent traits in the dyslexic brain is critical for developing effective interventions. This longitudinal intervention study examines the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) in dyslexic and typical readers, exploring how this key component of the brain's reading circuitry changes with learning. We found that dyslexic readers show significant differences in VWFA presence, size, and tuning properties compared to typical readers. While reading intervention improved reading skills and increased VWFA size, disparities persisted, suggesting that VWFA abnormalities are an enduring trait of dyslexia. Notably, we found that even with sufficient intervention to close the reading skill gap, dyslexic readers are still expected to have smaller VWFAs. Our results reveal intervention-driven long-term neural and behavioral changes, while also elucidating stable differences in the functional architecture of the dyslexic brain. This provides new insights into the potential and limitations of learning-induced plasticity in the human visual cortex.
了解诵读困难症患者大脑中可塑性和持久性特征之间的平衡对于开发有效的干预措施至关重要。这项纵向干预研究考察了诵读困难症患者和正常读者的视觉词形区（VWFA），探索大脑阅读回路的这一关键组成部分如何随学习而变化。我们发现，与正常读者相比，诵读困难症患者的VWFA在存在、大小和调谐特性方面存在显著差异。虽然阅读干预提高了阅读技能并增大了VWFA的大小，但差异仍然存在，这表明VWFA异常是诵读困难症的一个持久特征。值得注意的是，我们发现，即使进行了足够的干预以弥合阅读技能差距，诵读困难症患者的VWFA预计仍会较小。我们的研究结果揭示了干预驱动的长期神经和行为变化，同时也阐明了诵读困难症患者大脑功能结构的稳定差异。这为人类视觉皮层中学习诱导可塑性的潜力和局限性提供了新的见解。
