A universal reading network and its modulation by writing system and reading ability in French and Chinese children
- INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimage Unit, France
- Beijing Normal University, China
- Ecole Normale Supérieure, PSL Research University, France
- INSERM, France
- Peking University, China
Abstract
Are the brain mechanisms of reading acquisition similar across writing systems? And do similar brain anomalies underlie reading difficulties in alphabetic and ideographic reading systems? In a cross-cultural paradigm, we measured the fMRI responses to words, faces and houses in 96 Chinese and French 10-year-old children, half of whom were struggling with reading. We observed a reading circuit which was strikingly similar across languages and consisting of the left fusiform gyrus, superior temporal gyrus/sulcus, precentral and middle frontal gyri. Activations in some of these areas were modulated either by language or by reading ability, but without interaction between those factors. In various regions previously associated with dyslexia, reading difficulty affected activation similarly in Chinese and French readers, including the middle frontal gyrus, a region previously described as specifically altered in Chinese. Our analyses reveal a large degree of cross-cultural invariance in the neural correlates of reading acquisition and reading impairment.
Data availability
The processed data to generate figures in this manuscript will be shared in the Open Science Framework (Identifier: DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/C4AXG).
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (81171016,81371206,31971039)
- Xiangzhi Meng
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-06-NEURO-019-01,ANR-11-BSV4-014-01,ANR-17-EURE-0017 and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL)
- Franck Ramus
Fondation Bettencourt Schueller
- Stanislas Dehaene
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Andrea E Martin, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands
Ethics
Human subjects: The study was approved by Institutional Review Boards at Beijing Normal University in China and local ethics committee (CPP Ile de France VII, N˚ 11-008) in Kremlin-Bicêtre, France (#20130331). Written consent and consent to publish was obtained from all children and their parents.
Version history
- Received: December 19, 2019
- Accepted: October 26, 2020
- Accepted Manuscript published: October 29, 2020 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: November 16, 2020 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2020, Feng et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A universal reading network and its modulation by writing system and reading ability in French and Chinese children
eLife 9:e54591.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.54591
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