FMRI activation during paragraph reading in pediatric epilepsy

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Pediatric Neurology

Background:

• Epilepsy in children can impact cognitive functions, including reading abilities.
• Understanding brain activation during reading is crucial for identifying potential learning challenges.
• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offers insights into neural networks involved in reading.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare brain activation patterns during paragraph reading between children with and without epilepsy.
• To investigate the relationship between brain activation and neuropsychological performance in these groups.
• To explore activation differences in a subset of struggling readers with epilepsy.

Main Methods:

• 41 children with focal epilepsy and 41 healthy controls (mean age ~10 years) underwent fMRI during a paragraph reading task.
• Participants completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery.
• Group comparisons of brain activation and correlational analyses with performance data were conducted.

Main Results:

• No significant differences in overall brain activation during reading were found between children with and without epilepsy.
• Better reading performance (sight words, fluency, comprehension) correlated with left superior temporal gyrus activation.
• Struggling readers with epilepsy showed reduced activation in specific areas (temporal gyrus, cerebellum, frontal gyrus) compared to controls and non-struggling epilepsy readers.

Conclusions:

• The reading network's activation is largely similar in children with and without epilepsy, despite cognitive differences.
• Reduced activation in specific brain regions is associated with poorer reading performance in children with epilepsy.
• fMRI paragraph reading tasks are robust for identifying language networks, even in pediatric epilepsy populations, and for presurgical mapping.