Neural organization of ventral white matter tracts parallels the initial steps 
of reading development: A DTI tractography study

Vanderauwera, Jolijn; De Vos, Astrid; Forkel, Stephanie J.; Catani, Marco; Wouters, Jan; Vandermosten, Maaike; Ghesquière, Pol

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2018.05.007

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Neural organization of ventral white matter tracts parallels the initial steps of reading development: A DTI tractography study

MPS-Authors

There are no MPG-Authors in the publication available

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

Vanderauwera_etal_2018_neural organization of ventral white matter tracts.pdf
(Publisher version), 650KB

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Vanderauwera, J., De Vos, A., Forkel, S. J., Catani, M., Wouters, J., Vandermosten, M., et al. (2018). Neural organization of ventral white matter tracts parallels the initial steps of reading development: A DTI tractography study. Brain and Language, 183, 32-40. doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2018.05.007.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-000E-B2B6-B

Abstract

Insight in the developmental trajectory of the neuroanatomical reading correlates is important to understand related cognitive processes and disorders. In adults, a dual pathway model has been suggested encompassing a dorsal phonological and a ventral orthographic white matter system. This dichotomy seems not present in pre-readers, and the specific role of ventral white matter in reading remains unclear. Therefore, the present longitudinal study investigated the relation between ventral white matter and cognitive processes underlying reading in children with a broad range of reading skills (n = 61). Ventral pathways of the reading network were manually traced using diffusion tractography: the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and uncinate fasciculus (UF). Pathways were examined pre-reading (5–6 years) and after two years of reading acquisition (7–8 years). Dimension reduction for the cognitive measures resulted in one component for pre-reading cognitive measures and a separate phonological and orthographic component for the early reading measures. Regression analyses revealed a relation between the pre-reading cognitive component and bilateral IFOF and left ILF. Interestingly, exclusively the left IFOF was related to the orthographic component, whereas none of the pathways was related to the phonological component. Hence, the left IFOF seems to serve as the lexical reading route, already in the earliest reading stages.