title: Language-general and -specific white matter microstructural bases for reading.
abstract: In the past decade, several studies have investigated language-general and -specific brain regions for reading. However, very limited research has examined the white matter that connects these cortical regions. By using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), the current study investigated the common and divergent relationship between white matter integrity indexed by fractional anisotropy (FA) and native language reading abilities in 89 Chinese and 93 English speakers. Conjunction analysis revealed that for both groups, reading ability was associated with the FA of seven white matter fiber bundles in two main anatomical locations in the left hemisphere: the dorsal corona radiate/corpus callosum/superior longitudinal fasciculus which might be for phonological access, and the ventral uncinate fasciculus/external capsule/inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus which might be for semantic processing. Contrast analysis showed that the FA of the left temporal part of superior longitudinal fasciculus contributed more to reading in English than in Chinese, which is consistent with the notion that this tract is involved in grapheme-to-phoneme conversion for alphabetic language reading. These results are the first evidence of language-general and -specific white matter microstructural bases for reading.
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, PR China.
authors.forename: Mingxia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA. Electronic address: cschen@uci.edu.
authors.forename: Chuansheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, PR China.
authors.forename: Gui
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.affiliation: Center for Cognitive and Behavioral Brain Imaging, Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
authors.forename: Zhong-Lin
authors.initials: ZL
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: Center for Studies of Psychological Application and School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China.
authors.forename: Leilei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mei
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, PR China.
authors.forename: Hongli
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xue
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
authors.forename: Miao
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Beibei, Chongqing, 400715, China.
authors.forename: Qinghua
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: He
authors.affiliation: Brainnetome Center, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Jin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, PR China. Electronic address: dongqi@bnu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Dong
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D016880:Anisotropy; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D056324:Diffusion Tensor Imaging; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D066127:White Matter / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D055815:Young Adult