Presentation
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Biomarkers of Developmental Language Disorder and their Relationship with Language Impairment
Poster D50 in Poster Session D, Wednesday, October 25, 4:45 - 6:30 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Noelle Abbott1, Annika Linke2,3, Inna Fishman1,2,3, Tracy Love1,4; 1SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders, 2SDSU Department of Psychology, 3SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology, 4SDSU School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is a heterogenous neurodevelopmental disorder that affects a child’s ability to comprehend and produce spoken or written language but cannot be attributed to hearing loss, intellectual disability, or neurological damage. DLD affects around 7-8% of kindergarten-age children in the United States making it more prevalent than other more widely recognized developmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and dyslexia (Zablotsky et al., 2019). Children with DLD often suffer from higher levels of depression and social anxiety than typically developing (TD) children and these symptoms tend to persist into adulthood (Botting et al., 2019). Despite the prevalence of DLD and the profound impact it can have on overall well-being, little is understood about the underlying neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to it, as neuroimaging findings are inconsistent regarding the ways in which these factors contribute to language impairment. Nonetheless, there is growing evidence that both structural and functional brain differences exist. Of particular interest to this proposal are functional brain differences that impact language abilities. The few functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of children with DLD have found varying results for between- and within- group comparisons (Evans & Brown, 2016). This variability may have to do with differences in the underlying properties that support brain function (e.g., neurovascular, hemodynamic, etc.). In this ongoing work, we employ metrics of brain health and functionality that include measures of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) patterns to investigate potential biomarkers of DLD and their relationship to language abilities. To this end, we have piloted the imaging and behavioral testing procedures in both neurotypical adults (n=10) and children (n=2) to ensure feasibility and data quality. Ongoing testing will target 20 monolingual, English-speaking children with DLD and 20 TD children. All participants will be between the ages of 9-11 years (to better account for changing neurological and linguistic milestones) and will be matched at the group level for sex, non-verbal intelligence, and socioeconomic status. All children will be tested on a range of linguistic and non-linguistic assessments and will complete MRI scanning. MRI sequences will include resting-state pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) to characterize patterns of cerebral blood flow (CBF), resting-state echo planar imaging (EPI) to examine intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) in language networks, and structural sequences (T1-weighted and T2-weighted). CBF data will be processed using the ASLprep Pipeline to generate CBF values across the whole brain and in language regions of interest (ROIs). iFC data will be processed using the CONN toolbox. An ROI-ROI correlation approach will be used to examine network connectivity in the same language ROIs used for CBF analyses. A linear mixed effects model will be used to examine the relationship between CBF, connectivity indices emerging from the iFC analysis, and language assessment scores to determine if the relationships between CBF, iFC and language skills in children with DLD differ from those observed in TD children. This research will provide a new approach to understanding links between underlying brain function and language in DLD.
Topic Areas: Disorders: Developmental,