fMRI of Normal Language Development in Children

描述（由申请人提供）：Korbinian Brodmann在同一篇论文中指出，他的历史发现“迫使我们正式推进功能定位原则，将其作为无可辩驳的规则”，他澄清说：“人们无法想象——人类的感知（例如声音）——除了通过无数基本活动的无限复杂和涉及的相互作用和合作之外，还有任何其他方式发生，这些活动与许多皮质区域同时起作用，而且可能是整个大脑皮层……”（布罗德曼，1909[1，第255页]）。现代神经成像的发现现在证明了Brodmann对他的数据的理解有多好，并支持了分布式网络为大脑功能提供服务的概念。功能磁共振成像（fMRI）已成为21世纪人类大脑语言网络和功能连接研究中一种重要的非侵入性方法。虽然它在儿童语言发展研究中的应用具有一定的挑战性，但在本提案的前五年，我们通过开发儿童友好的方法来研究儿童语言处理，并取得技术进步，确保从这个人群中获得和分析有效的数据，从而解决了这些挑战。我们已经证明，语言功能的大脑分布随着年龄的增长而变化，表现出受正常发育和神经系统疾病影响的模式。这个庞大的数据集（5- 18岁）为开发和应用新的统计方法提供了必要的力量，通过独立成分分析来识别按时间顺序连接的激活区域，并通过线性结构方程建模技术来建立它们的功能连接。这项工作将促进对大脑-语言关系的理解，超越成人语言的静态模型，以语言习得时期为代表的动态模型。这些数据也将作为两项新研究的参考框架。第一项研究扩展了我们原来对正常语言发展的纵向研究，涵盖了5-18岁儿童的11年时间。第二项研究研究了语言功能的神经可塑性与儿童癫痫相关，作为慢性脑损伤的一种模型。这些研究和方法有望揭示一个世纪前由Brodmann在大脑发育的独特背景下所预示的定位和连接主义模型的个体发生。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In the same treatise in which he states that his historical findings "compel us to formally advance the principle of functional localization as an irrefutable rule", Korbinian Brodmann clarifies that "One cannot think of - human perception (of sound for example) - taking place in any other way than through an infinitely complex and involved interaction and cooperation of numerous elementary activities, with the simultaneous functioning of just as many cortical zones, and probably of the whole cortex..." (Brodmann, 1909 [1, p. 255]). Modern neuroimaging findings now demonstrate how well Brodmann understood his data and support the notion of brain functions as served by a distributed network. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has emerged as an important non-invasive methodology in 21st century studies of language networks and functional connectivity in the human brain. Although its application in studies of child language development have been somewhat more challenging, during the first five years of this proposal, we addressed these challenges by developing child-friendly approaches for studying language processing in children and made technical advances that assure valid data is obtained and analyzed from this population. We have demonstrated that the cerebral distribution of language function changes with age, exhibiting patterns that are influenced by normal development as well as neurological disorders. This large data set (n>300, age 5- 18 years) provides the necessary power for the development and application of new statistical approaches to identify chronologically-linked regions of activation through Independent Component Analysis and model their functional connections through Linear Structural Equation Modeling techniques. This work will advance the understanding of brain-language relations beyond the static models of adult language to the dynamics represented by the period of language acquisition. This data will also serve as a frame of reference for two new studies. The first extends our original longitudinal study of normal language development to cover a period of 11 years in children 5-18 years of age. The second investigates the neuroplasticity of language function associated with childhood onset epilepsy as, a model of chronic brain injury. These studies and methods hold the promise of revealing the ontogeny of both localization and connectionist models foreshadowed a century ago by Brodmann, in the unique context of the developing brain.