Neural Correlates of Reading in Medulloblastoma Survivor

至少60%的儿童接受当代多模式治疗（即，不幸的是，这些幸存者中的大多数最终都会经历智商下降，学习困难，学业失败。我们研究的长期目标是确定儿童癌症长期幸存者中认知缺陷的神经基质。本研究的重点是阅读能力的缺陷。本研究旨在验证以下假设：髓母细胞瘤幸存者阅读解码的行为缺陷反映了治疗诱导的腹侧视觉处理在阅读技能发展过程中的中断。功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）和扩散张量成像（DTI）将用于一项纵向研究，以比较患者和年龄相似的对照组的正射处理神经系统。神经成像数据这项研究将对髓母细胞瘤治疗相关的认知缺陷的根本原因产生重要的见解，确定药物和行为干预的潜在目标，以改善已经接受治疗的幸存者的认知功能，并发现减少髓母细胞瘤治疗对未来治疗患者的负面影响的机会。此外，髓母细胞瘤幸存者将作为与明确的治疗性损伤相关的获得性阅读障碍的模型人群。对患者和健康对照儿童的纵向行为和影像学研究可能会对腹侧视觉系统在其他健康儿童正常和异常阅读能力发展中的作用产生新的见解。

At least 60% of children treated for medulloblastoma with contemporary multimodality therapy (i.e., surgica resection, radiation therapy, and high-dose chemotherapy) will live more than 5 years after initial diagnosis Unfortunately, the majority of these survivors ultimately experience IQ loss, learning difficulties, an academic failure. The long-term goal of our research is to identify neural substrates of cognitive deficit among long-term survivors of childhood cancer. The focus of this application is deficits in reading ability The study is designed to test the hypothesis that behavioral deficits in reading decoding amon medulloblastoma survivors reflect therapy-induced disruption of ventral visual processing during th development of reading skills. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imagin (DTI) will be used in a longitudinal study to compare neural systems for orthographic processing in patient and age-similar controls. The neuroimaging data (fMRI and DTI) will be analyzed in relation to behaviora performance on a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests This research will generate important insights into the fundamental causes of cognitive deficits associate with medulloblastoma therapy, identify potential targets for pharmacological and behavioral interventions t improve cognitive function in survivors who have already been treated, and discover opportunities to reduc the negative impact of medulloblastoma therapy on patients treated in the future. Furthermore, th medulloblastoma survivors will serve as a model population with acquired dyslexia related to well-define therapeutic insult. The longitudinal behavioral and imaging studies in patients and healthy controls may yiel new insights into the role of the ventral visual system in development of normal and abnormal reading abilit in otherwise healthy children.