Poster No:
1005
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Laura Bradley1, Kelly Hiersche1, Anna Quatrale1, Zeynep Saygin1
Institutions:
1Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Interhemispheric asymmetries in functional specialization are well documented and may be associated with uniquely human cognitive abilities like language and higher order social cognition (e.g. theory of mind, ToM). Structural asymmetries, such as sulcal depth, curvature, and cortical thickness, may be associated with these functional asymmetries, and are present early in development. Perhaps these structural asymmetries precede and drive later-developing functional asymmetries, thus providing clues as to the physical mechanisms that determine uniquely human cognition. Given the high variability in functional specialization, the link between structural and functional asymmetries (and the developmental progression of this relationship) needs to be studied at an individual subject level. This study examines structural and functional asymmetries across development in children (n=71, ages 3-13) and adults (n=69) who have been scanned with structural imaging and multiple fMRI tasks including auditory and written language, and ToM.
Methods:
Children and adults completed T1-weighted structural MRI and task-based fMRI. Structural images were processed in FreeSurfer to quantify structural properties and registered to an interhemispheric template. Functional data were analyzed in native space and contrast images were generated for language selectivity (meaningful sentences presented auditorily vs. nonsense sentences or texturized sound) (Fedorenko, 2010), visual word selectivity (visually presented words vs. line-drawings of objects, faces, and scrambled words) (Saygin, 2016), and mentalizing (nonverbal movie timepoints for characters thinking about other characters vs. timepoints where characters experienced physical pain) (Jacoby, 2016; Richardson,2018). Contrast images were projected to an interhemispheric template to analyze functional asymmetries. General linear models compared left-right asymmetries of structural properties and task-based activation (auditory language localizer: N=60 children, N=51 adults; written language: N=65 children, N=55 adults; ToM: N=44 children, N=36 adults) both within and across age groups. Sulcal depth asymmetries and functional asymmetries were correlated per vertex for the child and adult groups separately.
Results:
Adults showed 31 significant clusters of interhemispheric differences in sulcal depth (p < 0.05, corrected), spanning frontal (precentral, lateral orbitofrontal), temporal (superior temporal, middle temporal, fusiform), parietal (supramarginal, inferior parietal), and limbic (insula, parahippocampal) regions. Children showed similar sulcal asymmetry, with no changes in this asymmetry with age. Language and visual word selectivity showed left-lateralized activation in both children and adults, with visual word asymmetries increasing with age especially in ventral visual cortex (reflecting the emergence of visual word selectivity in left visual regions, i.e. visual word form area, VWFA, as children learned to read). Auditory language asymmetries did not appear to change with age. ToM elicited right-lateralized activation in children as well as in adults, especially in temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and this asymmetry did not appear to increase with age. These functional asymmetries appeared to be related to the structural asymmetries but could not account for the age-related increases in visual word asymmetries.
Conclusions:
Our findings suggest that structural asymmetries in regions supporting language and social cognition are established early in development. Additionally, the only age-related increases in functional asymmetries involved the development of reading and emergence of the VWFA, suggesting that much of the asymmetries observed in adults are present quite early in development. Ongoing analyses will incorporate curvature and thickness measures to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the development of hemispheric specialization.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Social Cognition
Language:
Language Acquisition
Lifespan Development:
Lifespan Development Other 1
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Activation (eg. BOLD task-fMRI) 2
Keywords:
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Language
STRUCTURAL MRI
Other - Lateralization, Social Cognition
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Please indicate below if your study was a "resting state" or "task-activation” study.
Task-activation
Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):
Healthy subjects
Was this research conducted in the United States?
Yes
Are you Internal Review Board (IRB) certified?
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Yes, I have IRB or AUCC approval
Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel?
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Yes
Were any animal research approved by the relevant IACUC or other animal research panel?
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Not applicable
Please indicate which methods were used in your research:
Functional MRI
Structural MRI
For human MRI, what field strength scanner do you use?
3.0T
Which processing packages did you use for your study?
Free Surfer
Provide references using APA citation style.
Fedorenko, E. (2010). New method for fMRI investigations of language: defining ROIs functionally in individual subjects. Journal of Neurophysiology, 104(2), 1177-1194.
Jacoby, N. (2016). Localizing Pain Matrix and Theory of Mind networks with both verbal and non-verbal stimuli. NeuroImage, 126, 39–48.
Richardson, H. (2018). Development of the social brain from age three to twelve years. Nature Communications, 9, 1027.
Saygin, Z. M. (2016). Connectivity precedes function in the development of the visual word form area. Nature Neuroscience, 19(9), 1250–1255.
No