Vocabulary growth rate from preschool to school‐age years is reflected in the connectivity of the arcuate fasciculus in 14‐year‐old children

Abstract

The acquisition of language involves the functional specialization of several cortical regions. Connectivity between these brain regions may also change with the development of language. Various studies have demonstrated that the arcuate fasciculus was essential for language function. Vocabulary learning is one of the most important skills in language acquisition. In the present longitudinal study, we explored the influence of vocabulary development on the anatomical properties of the arcuate fasciculus. Seventy-nine Chinese children participated in this study. Between age 4 and age 10, they were administered the same vocabulary task repeatedly. Following a previous study, children's vocabulary developmental trajectories were clustered into three subgroups (consistently good, catch-up, consistently poor). At age 14, diffusion tensor imaging data were collected. Using ROI-based tractography, the anterior, posterior and direct segments of the bilateral arcuate fasciculus were delineated in each child's native space. Group comparisons showed a significantly reduced fractional anisotropy in the left arcuate fasciculus of children in the consistently poor group, in particular in the posterior and direct segments of the arcuate fasciculus. No group differences were observed in the right hemisphere, nor in the left anterior segment. Further regression analyses showed that the rate of vocabulary development, rather than the initial vocabulary size, was a specific predictor of the left arcuate fasciculus connectivity.

White matter in infancy is prospectively associated with language outcomes in kindergarten

“…Importantly, not all follow-up language measures of interest were linked with the left arcuate in infancy. The present findings specifically link structural organization of the arcuate fasciculus in infancy with subsequent phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge, which directly aligns with previously reported characterization of the arcuate fasciculus at the preschool/school-age in relation to phonological awareness ( Lebel and Beaulieu, 2009 ; Saygin et al, 2013 ; Reynolds et al, 2019 ) as well as vocabulary knowledge ( Su et al, 2018 ; López-Barroso et al, 2013 ). Our findings suggest that specific associations between the arcuate and phonological awareness as well as vocabulary knowledge are not only evident at the preschool/school age but are further revealed in association with structural foundations for the arcuate established in infancy.…”

Age of Speech Onset in Autism Relates to Structural Connectivity in the Language Network

“…We used diffusion imaging tractography to assess autism/control differences in the AF in adolescent and adult autistic individuals of typical intelligence, with or without SOD. In typical development, the left AF is associated with word acquisition, growth of the vocabulary ( Su et al. 2018 ), and linguistic abilities ( Salvan et al.…”

“…In typical development, the structural properties of the AF have been linked with word acquisition ( Lopez-Barroso et al. 2013 ), vocabulary growth ( Su et al. 2018 ), and other linguistic abilities ( Salvan et al.…”

Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying the mnemonic effect of songs after stroke

“…Forming the dorsal “perception-action” pathway, the left AF is thought to map sensory targets in posterior temporal areas to motor programs coded in Broca's area (Hickok and Poeppel, 2007) and it has also been found to be crucial for sustained rehearsal processes in verbal working memory (Buchsbaum et al, 2005). Consequently, the left AF is considered an important tract for verbal learning in children (Leroy et al, 2011; Su et al, 2018) and adults (López-Barroso et al, 2013; Thiebaut de Schotten et al, 2014) and it also forms a key part of the dual-stream pathway for singing production (Loui, 2015), its structure being malleable by singing training (Halwani et al, 2011). It is plausible that the slower presentation rate and the cues provided by the repetitive melodic structure in our sung task made it easier for covert rehearsal and less demanding for working memory, thereby recruiting the left dorsal pathway (AF) less than the spoken task.…”