Neural Correlates of Reading in Medulloblastoma Survivor

至少60%的儿童接受当代多模式治疗（即，手术 切除术、放射治疗和高剂量化疗）将在初步诊断后存活5年以上。 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， 学术失败我们研究的长期目标是确定认知缺陷的神经基质 儿童癌症的长期幸存者。本申请的重点是阅读能力的缺陷。 本研究旨在验证以下假设，即阅读解码的行为缺陷， 髓母细胞瘤存活者反映了治疗诱导的腹侧视觉处理中断， 发展阅读技能。功能磁共振成像（fMRI）和扩散张量成像 (DTI)将用于纵向研究，比较患者的正字法处理神经系统 年龄相似的对照组。神经影像学数据（fMRI和DTI）将与行为相关性进行分析。 在一系列综合神经心理测试中的表现 这项研究将产生重要的见解，认知缺陷的根本原因相关 通过髓母细胞瘤治疗，确定药理学和行为干预的潜在靶点， 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。而且 髓母细胞瘤幸存者将作为一个模型人口与获得性阅读障碍有关的明确定义， 治疗性侮辱患者和健康对照的纵向行为和成像研究可能会产生 腹侧视觉系统在正常和异常阅读能力发展中作用的新认识 在其他方面健康的儿童中。

At least 60% of children treated for medulloblastoma with contemporary multimodality therapy (i.e., surgical 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, and academic failure. The long-term goal of our research is to identify neural substrates of cognitive deficits 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 among medulloblastoma survivors reflect therapy-induced disruption of ventral visual processing during the development of reading skills. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) will be used in a longitudinal study to compare neural systems for orthographic processing in patients and age-similar controls. The neuroimaging data (fMRI and DTI) will be analyzed in relation to behavioral performance on a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests. This research will generate important insights into the fundamental causes of cognitive deficits associated with medulloblastoma therapy, identify potential targets for pharmacological and behavioral interventions to improve cognitive function in survivors who have already been treated, and discover opportunities to reduce the negative impact of medulloblastoma therapy on patients treated in the future. Furthermore, the medulloblastoma survivors will serve as a model population with acquired dyslexia related to well-defined therapeutic insult. The longitudinal behavioral and imaging studies in patients and healthy controls may yield new insights into the role of the ventral visual system in development of normal and abnormal reading ability in otherwise healthy children.