Abstract
Reading disability has been considered as a disconnection syndrome. Recently, an increasing number of studies have emphasized the role of subcortical regions in reading. However, the majority of research on reading disability has focused on the connections amongst brain regions within the classic cortical reading network. Here, we used graph theoretical analysis to investigate whether subcortical regions serve as hubs (regions highly connected with other brain regions) during reading both in Chinese children with reading disability (N = 15, age ranging from 11.03 to 13.08 years) and in age-matched typically developing children (N = 16, age ranging from 11.17 to 12.75 years) using a visual rhyming judgment task and a visual meaning judgment task. We found that the bilateral thalami were the unique hubs for typically developing children across both tasks. Additionally, subcortical regions (right putamen, left pallidum) were also unique hubs for typically developing children but only in the rhyming task. Among these subcortical hub regions, the left pallidum showed reduced connectivity with inferior frontal regions in the rhyming judgment but not semantic task in reading disabled compared with typically developing children. These results suggest that subcortical-cortical disconnection, which may be particularly relevant to the phonological and phonology-related learning process, may be associated with Chinese reading disability.
Highlights
An increasing number of studies have reported that subcortical regions are involved in the language and reading neural network (Tomasi and Volkow, 2012; Hebb and Ojemann, 2013; Liu et al, 2018; Tang et al, 2018; see in a review: Price, 2012)
As the major aim of the current study was to explore the role of the subcortical regions in typical as well as atypical reading development, we concentrated on the nodal properties of the subcortical nodes
We used graph theoretical analysis to examine the connectivity of subcortical regions within the reading network in typically developing (TD) and reading disabled (RD) Chinese children during two reading tasks
Summary
An increasing number of studies have reported that subcortical regions are involved in the language and reading neural network (Tomasi and Volkow, 2012; Hebb and Ojemann, 2013; Liu et al, 2018; Tang et al, 2018; see in a review: Price, 2012). Pugh et al (2013) found that activation of the left thalamus was significantly correlated with reading scores in children, and they suggested that future studies investigating reading and reading disorders should include both cortical and subcortical regions. Taken together, these studies suggest that subcortical structures play an important role in language processing
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