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A passive auditory language fMRI paradigm in children with diverse language development profiles
Poster Session D, Saturday, October 26, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm, Great Hall 3 and 4
Tatiana Bolgina1, Ekaterina Shcheglova1, Elizaveta Dmitrova2, Militina Gomozova1, Tatyana Zhilyaeva3,4, Ulyana Nasonova3, Olesya Klekochko3, Evgenij Klyuev3, Olga Dragoy1,5; 1Center for Language and Brain, HSE, Moscow, Russia, 2Center for Language and Brain, HSE, Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia, 3Privolzhsky Research Medical University, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, 4Bekhterev National Medical Research Center for Psychiatry and Neurology, St. Petersburg, Russia, 5Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
A passive auditory language fMRI paradigm has become a necessity for a reliable presurgical functional language assessment especially in pediatric clinical populations (Lyn Ives-Deliperi & Butler, 2018; Suarez et al., 2014). The paradigm does not require any overt patient participation, has been validated to detect activations in language-related cortices showing consistent results with invasive clinical gold-standards (Manan et al., 2020; Okahara et al., 2023; 2024). While the paradigm has been validated in pediatric and adult epilepsy surgical planning (Okahara et al., 2024; Suarez et al., 2014) as well as in healthy adults (Haller et al., 2007), children with diverse language development profiles remained understudied (Vannest et al., 2009). The goal of this study was to determine language functional localization in children with different language development profiles. Twenty-eight Russian children (20 males; M age = 6.4 years, SD = 0.7, range = 5‒7.5) underwent 1.5T magnetic resonance imaging and a language development assessment with the Russian Child Language Assessment Battery (RuCLAB) (Arutiunian et al., 2022). The sample included six typically developing children and children with one or several disorders such as articulation speech disorder, expressive speech disorder, receptive speech disorder and/or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to form a continuum of language development profiles. Language-related functional activations were registered using a passive auditory paradigm: the participants listened to the Russian fairy tale “Teremok” in the experimental condition and tones in the baseline condition. The obtained functional Т2*-images (TR/TE/FA = 3000ms/54ms/90°, matrix size 64*64, voxel 3х3х3 mm, 90 axial slices) and structural T1-images (TR/TE/FA = 2160ms/5.26ms/15°) were analyzed in SPM12. Functional lateralization indices (LIs) were calculated in the LI toolbox (Wilke & Lidzba, 2007) using the formula (left - right) / (left + right), t-weighting of voxels, and frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes masks. The group analysis showed significant BOLD signal increases in the left superior temporal gyrus extending to the left middle temporal gyrus (k = 453 voxels, peak at MNI: -62 -32 4, p=.001) and in the right superior temporal gyrus extending to the right middle temporal gyrus (k = 585 voxels, peak at MNI: 60 -14 2, p=.001). LIs in all children varied from -0.74 to 0.93 (temporal lobe); from -0.96 to 0.86 (frontal lobe) and from -0.84 to 0.98 (parietal lobe). Most children showed a bilateral activation (64.3%, n = 18), whereas a unilateral activation was found in five children. A preliminary Pearson correlation analysis did not show any significant associations between LIs and language RuCLAB scores at the corrected for multiple comparisons level. The results are in line with previous studies that found functional language activation in temporal regions during the passive listening task (Haller et al., 2007; Vannest et al., 2009; Wilke et al., 2005). The present study supports the contribution of the superior and middle temporal gyri of both hemispheres for auditory processing and language comprehension. Overall, the study confirms the validity of the passive auditory paradigm in young children with diverse language development profiles.
Topic Areas: Disorders: Developmental, Speech Perception