NSF/SBE-BSF: Biological mechanisms underlying the acquisition of reading skills

NSF/SBE-BSF：获得阅读技能的生物机制

• 批准号: 1551330
• 负责人: Jason Yeatman
• 金额: $ 63万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-02-15 至 2020-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1551330&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; SBE; BSF; Biological; mechanisms

Many aspects of human behavior such as walking, smiling, and learning a language develop naturally as children experience the world and people around them. However reading is not a naturally occurring development. Rather, learning to read requires instruction, training, and practice. The goal of this funded project is to investigate how children's brains change over the course of two months of reading instruction. The present proposal capitalizes on cutting-edge measurement techniques and software algorithms that the research team has developed, to characterize the biological processes that underlie learning to read.Children between six and twelve years of age will be followed longitudinally during an eight-week, intensive reading instruction program. Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) measurements that are sensitive to changes in myelination, the creation of new tissue macromolecules, and the packing density of axons within the white matter will be used to monitor changes in brain tissue structure during learning. Functional MRI will be used to model how the computations performed by the brain's reading circuitry change in response to reading instruction. By integrating multiple measurement modalities, and sampling children of different ages, this project will determine how the brain's capacity for experience-dependent plasticity changes over the course of elementary school and whether learning can be predicted based on a model of a child's reading circuitry. Toward this end, the project tackles 3 major challenges: (1) Determine what properties of human white matter change in response to reading instruction; (2) Measure how the brain's capacity for plasticity changes over development; and (3) Model the relationship between changes in brain circuit structure and cortical computation. Understanding how the developing brain builds circuits to rapidly translate printed symbols into meaning is an important scientific challenge with implications for education and the treatment of reading disabilities. A deeper understanding of the interplay between biological and cognitive development will lead to innovative approaches to education that are tailored to a child's unique pattern of brain maturation.

人类行为的许多方面，如走路、微笑和学习语言，都是在儿童体验世界和周围人的过程中自然发展起来的。然而，阅读不是一种自然发生的发展。相反，学习阅读需要指导、训练和实践。这项资助项目的目标是调查孩子们的大脑在两个月的阅读指导过程中是如何变化的。目前的提案利用了研究团队开发的尖端测量技术和软件算法，以表征学习阅读的生物过程。6至12岁的儿童将被纵向跟踪进行为期8周的强化阅读教学项目。定量磁共振成像（MRI）测量对髓鞘形成、新组织大分子的产生和白质内轴突的堆积密度的变化非常敏感，将用于监测学习过程中脑组织结构的变化。功能性核磁共振成像将用于模拟大脑的阅读回路如何根据阅读指令进行计算。通过整合多种测量方式，并对不同年龄的儿童进行抽样，该项目将确定大脑的经验依赖可塑性能力在小学阶段是如何变化的，以及是否可以基于儿童阅读回路模型来预测学习。为此，该项目解决了3个主要挑战：(1)确定人类白质的哪些特性在阅读指导下发生了变化；(2)测量大脑的可塑性如何随着发育而变化；(3)模拟脑回路结构变化与皮层计算之间的关系。了解发育中的大脑是如何建立电路来快速将印刷符号转换为意义的，这是一项重要的科学挑战，对教育和阅读障碍的治疗具有重要意义。对生物和认知发展之间相互作用的更深入了解将导致针对儿童独特的大脑成熟模式量身定制的创新教育方法。