Functional connectivity of the speech network in relation to reading skill in school-age children

Learning to read accurately and efficiently relies on proficiency in earlier-developing communication skills, which includes processing and producing speech. It remains unknown to what extent differences in speech production and underlying neural mechanisms for speech production may be related to variability in the development of skilled reading and in reading outcomes. This thesis presents a series of studies which leverage the large scale, open-source longitudinal dataset from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study to characterize functionally-defined cortical networks for speech in school-age children and investigate the relationship between speech network connectivity and reading skill development. The first study demonstrates the feasibility of using a task-based adult atlas of cortical speech regions to define functional networks for speech production in task-free pediatric functional MRI data. Resting-state subnetworks in our school-age sample (9–10 years old) broadly align with those established in the task-based atlas, demonstrating the potential for examining speech networks in large-scale datasets that have collected resting-state MRI data. The second study models single-word reading skill in relation to the mean connectivity of functional speech networks and finds that stronger intrinsic connectivity of subnetworks containing higher-level associative regions is initially predictive of single-word reading skill, but that the effect is no longer significant when controlling for nonverbal IQ and vocabulary skill. The third study compares the mean connectivity of functional speech networks with single-word reading outcomes two years later and observes that good readers had significantly stronger connectivity in the higher-order subnetwork surrounding (though not containing) the core sensorimotor regions for speech, compared to poor readers. All together, these findings provide justification for further study in this area and leave open the possibility for functional neural correlates of speech production to inform mechanisms of reading development.

Author dc:creator

• Kapadia, Alexandra M.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Zuk, Jennifer

• Developmental psychology

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2144/49332

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.bu.edu:2144/49332