Using Cognitive Neuroscience to Predict Dyslexia among Kindergarden Children

描述(申请人提供)：本研究的长期目标是了解发育性阅读障碍的大脑基础，这是最常见的特殊学习障碍之一，并促进阅读障碍的早期识别，以便早期干预可以将阅读障碍对学生成绩、自我认知和长期生活结果的负面影响降至最低。阅读困难症通常是由于语音意识(操纵语言语音的能力)的缺陷导致的，这种缺陷先于并损害了阅读学习，但这种缺陷的根本原因尚未确定。神经成像方法，包括事件相关电位(ERPs)、功能磁共振成像(FMRI)和扩散张量成像(DTI)，已经确定了阅读障碍儿童的大脑差异。然而，几乎所有这些研究都涉及年龄较大的儿童，他们表现出阅读障碍，因此有两个基本问题仍然没有得到回答。首先，哪些大脑差异会导致阅读障碍(即，5岁的幼儿园儿童在一年级的阅读指导之前就存在这种差异)？其次，大脑测量能否显著增强我们预测哪些在幼儿园有阅读障碍风险的读前儿童在二年级时会变成阅读障碍的能力？为了回答这些问题，我们提议进行一项纵向研究，包括：(1)对1,000名阅读前儿童进行筛查，以确定120名阅读困难风险儿童和60名非阅读障碍儿童；(2)对这180名幼儿园儿童进行MRI、fMRI、DTI和ERP实验，以确定有阅读困难风险儿童和没有阅读困难风险儿童的大脑差异；(3)纵向跟踪这些儿童的语言和阅读发展情况，以发现哪些阅读前儿童在二年级结束时确实发展为阅读困难；以及(4)利用包括多元统计在内的各种统计方法，提高阅读前儿童识别阅读困难真实风险的准确性。这项研究在幼儿的多模式成像、纵向跟踪和翻译健康目标方面是新颖的，目的是开发方法来准确识别阅读障碍的真实风险，以便为这些儿童提供早期干预，将他们的学习困难降至最低。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term objective of this research is to understand the brain basis of developmental dyslexia, one of the most common specific learning disabilities, and to advance early identification of dyslexia so that early intervention can minimize the documented negative influence of dyslexia on student achievement, self-perception, and long-term life outcomes. Dyslexia typically results from a deficit in phonological awareness (the ability to manipulate speech sounds of language) that precedes and impairs learning to read, but the underlying cause of this deficit has not yet been determined. Neuroimaging methods, including event-related potentials (ERPs), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), have identified brain differences in children with dyslexia. Nearly all of these studies, however, involve older children with demonstrated reading failure, so two essential questions remain unanswered. First, what brain differences lead to dyslexia (i.e., are present in 5-year-old kindergartners prior to reading instruction in the 1st grade)? Second, can brain measures significantly enhance our ability to predict which pre- reading children at risk for dyslexia in kindergarten actually go on to become dyslexic by second grade? To answer these questions, we propose a longitudinal study that involves (1) screening 1000 pre-reading kindergartners to identify 120 children at risk for dyslexia and 60 children not at risk; (2) perform MRI, fMRI, DTI, and ERP experiments in these 180 kindergartners to identify brain differences in children with versus without risk for dyslexia; (3) longitudinally follow the language and reading development of these children to discover which at-risk children actually progress to dyslexia at the end of 2nd grade; and (4) use various statistical methods, including multivariate statistics, to improve the accuracy with pre-reading kindergartners can be identified as being at true risk for dyslexia. This study is novel in its multimodal imaging with young children, its longitudinal follow-up, and its translational health aim of developing methods to accurately identify young children at true risk for dyslexia so that such children can be offered early intervention to minimize their learning difficulties.