Convergent and divergent brain structural and functional abnormalities associated with developmental dyslexia
- Sun Yat-sen University, China
- Sun Yat-Sen University, China
- Anyang Preschool Education College, China
- Jining University, China
- Florida International University, United States
Abstract
Brain abnormalities in the reading network have been repeatedly reported in individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD); however, it is still not totally understood where the structural and functional abnormalities are consistent/inconsistent across languages. In the current multimodal meta-analysis, we found convergent structural and functional alterations in the left superior temporal gyrus across languages, suggesting a neural signature of DD. We found greater reduction in grey matter volume and brain activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus in morpho-syllabic languages (e.g. Chinese) than in alphabetic languages, and greater reduction in brain activation in the left middle temporal gyrus and fusiform gyrus in alphabetic languages than in morpho-syllabic languages. These language differences are explained as consequences of being DD while learning a specific language. In addition, we also found brain regions that showed increased grey matter volume and brain activation, presumably suggesting compensations and brain regions that showed inconsistent alterations in brain structure and function. Our study provides important insights about the etiology of DD from a cross-linguistic perspective with considerations of consistency/inconsistency between structural and functional alterations.
Data availability
All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Meta-analysis data is deposited to Dryad.
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meta-analysis dataDryad Digital Repository, doi:10.5061/dryad.0p2ngf222.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
- Fan Cao
Guangdong Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science (GD19CXL05)
- Fan Cao
Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou, China, Key Area Research and Development Program (202007030011)
- Fan Cao
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2021, Yan 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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Convergent and divergent brain structural and functional abnormalities associated with developmental dyslexia
eLife 10:e69523.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.69523
