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Abnormal developmental trajectory in the left occipitotemporal area in individuals with reading disability
Poster Session C, Friday, October 25, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Great Hall 3 and 4
Xiaohui Yan1, Shilin Xu2, Fan Cao1; 1The University of Hong Kong, 2Sun Yat-Sen University
Reading development is accompanied by functional changes in the brain including the left occipitotemporal (OT) region, which is involved in visuo-orthographic processing. However, significant functional differences have been found in this region in individuals with reading disability (RD). It is of great importance to understand how the left OT region develops in individuals with RD. In a cross-sectional study, we examined age-related changes in the brain during an auditory rhyming task in 61 fifth-grade children (mean age: 11.07 years), 44 seventh-grade adolescents (mean age: 13.21 years), and 61 college students (mean age: 20.80 years) with and without RD. We found that typical readers showed age-related increase in brain activation in the anterior/lateral OT and age-related decrease in the posterior/medial OT, while RD readers did not show age-related changes in the posterior/medial OT and weaker age-related increase in the anterior/lateral OT. Representational similarity analysis (RSA) showed that the OT regions are specialized for orthographic representation, especially in the anterior/lateral OT, however, RD readers did not show this greater orthographic specialization in the anterior/lateral OT than posterior/medial OT. These findings indicate abnormal developmental trajectories in the left OT region in RD readers, providing important insights about the prognosis of RD.
Topic Areas: Disorders: Developmental, Language Development/Acquisition