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Integrity of Ventral White Matter Tract Predicts Mean Length of Utterance at 5 years of age in The FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study
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Poster D93 in Poster Session D, Wednesday, October 25, 4:45 - 6:30 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Kiia Kurila1,2, Essi Vastamäki1,2, Aura Yli-Savola1,2, Jetro Tuulari2,3, Linnea Karlsson2,4,5, Hasse Karlsson2,4, Elina Mainela-Arnold1,2,6; 1University of Turku, Finland, 2FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, Turku Brain and Mind Center, University of Turku, Finland, 3Turku Collegium for Science, Medicine and Technology, University of Turku, Finland, 4Centre for Population Health Research, Turku University Hospital and University of Turku, 5Department of Clinical Medicine, Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Turku University Hospital and University of Turku, 6The Centre of Excellence for Learning Dynamics and Intervention Research (InterLearn)
Background: In this proposed poster, we will present a study we conducted to examine if variance in young children’s functional language use can be linked to integrity of their dorsal and ventral language streams proposed by the dual-stream model of speech processing in the brain. Evidence from studies relating gray matter structures in cortical language related areas to language difficulties (Mayes et al., 2015) have yielded inconsistent results. Based on Hickok and Poeppel’s (2007) dual-stream model, dorsal and ventral white matter tracts connecting these cortical language areas are important in speech processing. Given, that Fractional anisotropy (FA), a measure of the white matter integrity, increases during childhood brain development and that the increase is associated with white matter maturation e.g., increased tract myelination (Reynolds et al., 2019), we hypothesized that higher FA of these language-related white matter tracts would be associated with better language skills. Method: The participants of this study were Finnish speaking children from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. All children (N = 105) participated in language and brain imaging study visit at 5 years of age. Language skills were measured using Mean length of utterance (MLU), which was calculated from conversational speech sample recorded during free play. Regions of interest (ROI) were left and right Inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), Inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and Uncinate fasciculus representing ventral tract as well as Superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), a part of dorsal tract (obtained from FSL’s autoptx). Sex, handedness, age, socioeconomic status and parent’s age were considered as control variables. Multiple linear stepwise regression analyses with backward selection were conducted to explain variance in MLU with the FA values. Results: The results indicated that MLU was associated with left ILF FA. Higher FA of the left ILF was associated with shorter MLU. On the right hemisphere, none of the FA ROIs were significant correlates of MLU. However, predicting MLU, FA of right IFOF as well as interaction of right Uncinate fasciculus FA and ambidextrousness approached significance. Also, handedness and sex were significant predictors of MLU. Conclusion: The results of the study strengthen the evidence that integrity of ventral language white matter tracts is associated with individual differences in functional language abilities already at age 5. However, the direction of the relationship, higher FA predicting lower MLU, was opposite from what was expected. One explanation for this is that development of white matter integrity of different streams and language abilities is not linear. This calls for more longitudinal research relating developmental changes in the white matter integrity of ventral and dorsal streams to language development. Reference: Hickok, G. & Poeppel, D. (2007). The cortical organization of speech processing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8(5), 393–402. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2113. Mayes, A.K., Reilly, S. & Morgan, A.T. (2015). Neural correlates of childhood language disorder: a systematic review. Neural correlates of childhood language disorder, 57(8), 706–717, https://doi.org/10.1111/dmcn.12714. Reynolds, J.E., Grohs, M.N., Dewey, D. & Lebel, C. (2019). Global and regional white matter development in early childhood. NeuroImage, 196, 49–58, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.04.004.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition,