Aberrant topologies and reconfiguration pattern of functional brain network in children with second language reading impairment

Abstract

Prior work has extensively studied neural deficits in children with reading impairment (RI) in their native language but has rarely examined those of RI children in their second language (L2). A recent study revealed that the function of the local brain regions was disrupted in children with RI in L2, but it is not clear whether the disruption also occurs at a large-scale brain network level. Using fMRI and graph theoretical analysis, we explored the topology of the whole-brain functional network during a phonological rhyming task and network reconfigurations across task and short resting phases in Chinese children with English reading impairment versus age-matched typically developing (TD) children. We found that, when completing the phonological task, the RI group exhibited higher local network efficiency and network modularity compared with the TD group. When switching between the phonological task and the short resting phase, the RI group showed difficulty with network reconfiguration, as reflected in fewer changes in the local efficiency and modularity properties and less rearrangement of the modular communities. These findings were reproducible after controlling for the effects of in-scanner accuracy, participant gender, and L1 reading performance. The results from the whole-brain network analyses were largely replicated in the task-activated network. These findings provide preliminary evidence supporting that RI in L2 is associated with not only abnormal functional network organization but also poor flexibility of the neural system in responding to changing cognitive demands.

Rich-club structure contributes to individual variance of reading skills via feeder connections in children with reading disabilities

“…Although the turning angle threshold was lower than the present study, that earlier study also reported similar correlations between network efficiency and word-level reading scores. Decreased whole-brain local efficiency of other modalities of the connectome was also reported in Chinese native speakers with RD ( Liu et al, 2015 ; Liu et al, 2016 ). Higher efficiency indicates better transfer of information between nodes ( Bullmore and Sporns, 2009 ; Latora and Marchiori, 2001 ).…”

Differences between child and adult large‐scale functional brain networks for reading tasks

“…Graph theoretical measures were used to characterize the topological architectures of the functional brain networks derived above. In the current study, network properties including both global and nodal properties, which have been frequently used in previous studies on brain network analysis (Cao et al, ; Liu et al, ; Qi et al, ), were analyzed for each task's network. The global measures were included to reveal the architecture of the entire network, whereas nodal measures were included to interpret the contributions of individual nodes or brain regions to the network.…”

Longitudinal Task-Related Functional Connectivity Changes Predict Reading Development

“…This is consistent with research showing less efficient processing (e.g., a high degree of integrated functional connectivity across a more diffuse network) within regions associated with a narrative comprehension task for children with reading difficulties compared to task-dependent regions of normal readers ( Horowitz-Kraus et al, 2016 ). Whole-brain functional connectivity analysis for English as a second language (ESL) individuals indicates more localized clusters for an English phonological rhyming task in second language reading impaired children compared to normal controls ( Liu et al, 2016 ). In an analysis of a functionally defined reading network, similar to that in the present study, Wang et al (2013) found that greater interaction between distal hierarchically segregated network clusters is associated with better rhyming judgment task performance.…”