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Relationship between receptive vocabulary and the neural substrates for story processing in preschoolers
M Claire Sroka1, Jennifer Vannest, Thomas C Maloney
1Pediatric Neuroimaging Research Consortium, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, 3333 Burnet Ave. ML 5033, Cincinnati, OH, 45229, USA.
Abstract:
A left-lateralized fronto-temporo-parietal language network has been well-characterized in adults; however, the neural basis of this fundamental network has hardly been explored in the preschool years, despite this being a time for rapid language development and vocabulary growth. We examined the functional imaging correlates associated with vocabulary ability and narrative comprehension in 30 preschool children ages 3 to 5. Bilateral auditory cortex and superior temporal activation as well as left angular and supramarginal gyrus activation were observed during a passive listening-to-stories task. Boys showed greater activation than girls in the right anterior cingulate and right superior frontal gyrus (SFG). Finally, children with higher vocabulary scores showed increased grey matter left-lateralization and greater activation in bilateral thalamus, hippocampus, and left angular gyrus. This study is novel in its approach to relate left-hemisphere language regions and vocabulary scores in preschool-aged children using fMRI.
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