Cortical Thickness and Functional Connectivity in Occipitotemporal and Frontal Regions Are Critical for Chinese...

Learning to read is one of the most important missions in child development. Understanding the neural basis of this process supports the early diagnosis and intervention of reading difficulties in children. Most neuroscience studies on children's reading development are based on alphabetic languages. Chinese is a logographic language with different linguistic features. However, it remains unclear how structural and intrinsic functional network measures jointly characterize Chinese children's reading development and its change over time. In this study, we addressed this question using the Chinese Color Nest Project dataset, which included 184 children's cross-sectional and longitudinal reading tests and multimodal MRI images between 6 and 14 years old. We found that cortical thickness and functional connectivity in the bilateral frontal and occipital lobes were associated with Chinese children's reading development. Among these relations, only the reading-related functional connectivity between frontal lobes was moderated by age. In the prediction model, both the frontal and occipital lobes' structure and function predicted children's reading performance cross-sectionally, while mainly the occipital lobe contributed to reading performance longitudinally. In summary, using a large and multimodal dataset, this study systematically revealed the unique neural substrates of Chinese children's reading development. These findings contribute to an enhanced understanding of neural differences shaped by culture and language, providing insights for new targeted interventions for reading difficulties amongst Chinese children.