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Children with dyslexia frequently also struggle with math. However, studies of reading disability (RD) rarely assess math skill, and the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying co‐occurring reading and math disability (RD+MD) are not clear. The current study aimed to identify behavioral and neurocognitive factors associated with co‐occurring MD among 86 children with RD. Within this sample, 43% had co‐occurring RD+MD and 22% demonstrated a possible vulnerability in math, while 35% had no math difficulties (RD‐Only). We investigated whether RD‐Only and RD+MD students differed behaviorally in their phonological awareness, reading skills, or executive functions, as well as in the brain mechanisms underlying word reading and visuospatial working memory using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The RD+MD group did not differ from RD‐Only on behavioral or brain measures of phonological awareness related to speech or print. However, the RD+MD group demonstrated significantly worse working memory and processing speed performance than the RD‐Only group. The RD+MD group also exhibited reduced brain activations for visuospatial working memory relative to RD‐Only. Exploratory brain‐behavior correlations along a broad spectrum of math ability revealed that stronger math skills were associated with greater activation in bilateral visual cortex. These converging neuro‐behavioral findings suggest that poor executive functions in general, including differences in visuospatial working memory, are specifically associated with co‐occurring MD in the context of RD. Research Highlights: Children with reading disabilities (RD) frequently have a co‐occurring math disability (MD), but the mechanisms behind this high comorbidity are not well understood.We examined differences in phonological awareness, reading skills, and executive function between children with RD only versus co‐occurring RD+MD using behavioral and fMRI measures.Children with RD only versus RD+MD did not differ in their phonological processing, either behaviorally or in the brain.RD+MD was associated with additional behavioral difficulties in working memory, and reduced visual cortex activation during a visuospatial working memory task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most adults are better at recognizing recently encountered faces of their own race, relative to faces of other races. In adults, this race effect in face recognition is associated with differential neural representations of own‐ and other‐race faces in the fusiform face area (FFA), a high‐level visual region involved in face recognition. Previous research has linked these differential face representations in adults to viewers' implicit racial associations. However, despite the fact that the FFA undergoes a gradual development which continues well into adulthood, little is known about the developmental time‐course of the race effect in FFA responses. Also unclear is how this race effect might relate to the development of face recognition or implicit associations with own‐ or other‐races during childhood and adolescence. To examine the developmental trajectory of these race effects, in a cross‐sectional study of European American (EA) children (ages 7–11), adolescents (ages 12–16) and adults (ages 18–35), we evaluated responses to adult African American (AA) and EA face stimuli, using functional magnetic resonance imaging and separate behavioral measures outside the scanner. We found that FFA responses to AA and EA faces differentiated during development from childhood into adulthood; meanwhile, the magnitudes of race effects increased in behavioral measures of face‐recognition and implicit racial associations. These three race effects were positively correlated, even after controlling for age. These findings suggest that social and perceptual experiences shape a protracted development of the race effect in face processing that continues well into adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent efforts have focused on screening methods to identify children at risk for dyslexia as early as preschool/kindergarten. Unfortunately, while low sensitivity leads to under‐identification of at‐risk children, low specificity can lead to over‐identification, resulting in inaccurate allocation of limited educational resources. The present study focused on children identified as at‐risk in kindergarten who do not subsequently develop poor reading skills to specify factors associated with better reading outcomes among at‐risk children. Early screening was conducted in kindergarten and a subset of children was tracked longitudinally until second grade. Potential protective factors were evaluated at cognitive‐linguistic, environmental, and neural levels. Relative to at‐risk kindergarteners with subsequent poor reading, those with typical reading outcomes were characterized by significantly higher socioeconomic status (SES), speech production accuracy, and structural organization of the posterior right‐hemispheric superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF). A positive association between structural organization of the right SLF and subsequent decoding skills was found to be specific to at‐risk children and not observed among typical controls. Among at‐risk children, several kindergarten‐age factors were found to significantly contribute to the prediction of subsequent decoding skills: white matter organization in the posterior right SLF, age, gender, SES, and phonological awareness. These findings suggest that putative compensatory mechanisms are already present by the start of kindergarten. The right SLF, in conjunction with the cognitive‐linguistic and socioeconomic factors identified, may play an important role in facilitating reading development among at‐risk children. This study has important implications for approaches to early screening, and assessment strategies for at‐risk children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mindfulness training can enhance cognitive control, but the neural mechanisms underlying such enhancement in children are unknown. Here, we conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with sixth graders (mean age 11.76 years) to examine the impact of 8 weeks of school‐based mindfulness training, relative to coding training as an active control, on sustained attention and associated resting‐state functional brain connectivity. At baseline, better performance on a sustained‐attention task correlated with greater anticorrelation between the default mode network (DMN) and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a key node of the central executive network. Following the interventions, children in the mindfulness group preserved their sustained‐attention performance (i.e., fewer lapses of attention) and preserved DMN–DLPFC anticorrelation compared to children in the active control group, who exhibited declines in both sustained attention and DMN–DLPFC anticorrelation. Further, change in sustained‐attention performance correlated with change in DMN–DLPFC anticorrelation only within the mindfulness group. These findings provide the first causal link between mindfulness training and both sustained attention and associated neural plasticity. Administered as a part of sixth graders' school schedule, this RCT supports the beneficial effects of school‐based mindfulness training on cognitive control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developmental dyslexia affects 40–60% of children with a familial risk (FHD+) compared to a general prevalence of 5–10%. Despite the increased risk, about half of FHD+ children develop typical reading abilities (FHD+Typical). Yet the underlying neural characteristics of favorable reading outcomes in at‐risk children remain unknown. Utilizing a retrospective, longitudinal approach, this study examined whether putative protective neural mechanisms can be observed in FHD+Typical at the prereading stage. Functional and structural brain characteristics were examined in 47 FHD+ prereaders who subsequently developed typical (n = 35) or impaired (n = 12) reading abilities and 34 controls (FHD−Typical). Searchlight‐based multivariate pattern analyses identified distinct activation patterns during phonological processing between FHD+Typical and FHD−Typical in right inferior frontal gyrus (RIFG) and left temporo‐parietal cortex (LTPC) regions. Follow‐up analyses on group‐specific classification patterns demonstrated LTPC hypoactivation in FHD+Typical compared to FHD−Typical, suggesting this neural characteristic as an FHD+ phenotype. In contrast, RIFG showed hyperactivation in FHD+Typical than FHD−Typical, and its activation pattern was positively correlated with subsequent reading abilities in FHD+ but not controls (FHD−Typical). RIFG hyperactivation in FHD+Typical was further associated with increased interhemispheric functional and structural connectivity. These results suggest that some protective neural mechanisms are already established in FHD+Typical prereaders supporting their typical reading development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing interest in improving academic outcomes for students by enhancing mindfulness, there is a paucity of evidence that greater mindfulness is associated with success in school. We measured mindfulness with the short‐form Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) in over 2,000 urban students in Grades 5–8. The MAAS had good internal consistency and scale homogeneity. Greater mindfulness correlated significantly with better academic achievement as measured by grade point average and standardized tests of mathematics and literacy, greater improvement in academic performance from the prior school year, better attendance, and fewer suspensions. The relation between mindfulness and academic achievement was similar across demographic characteristics. These findings support the reliability of the MAAS as a measure of mindfulness among youth and provide initial evidence of an association between mindfulness and academic achievement. This association strengthens the rationale to explore whether mindfulness‐based interventions can enhance academic outcomes by leveraging the malleability of mindfulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading is a learned skill crucial for educational attainment. Children from families of lower socioeconomic status (SES) tend to have poorer reading performance and this gap widens across years of schooling. Reading relies on the orchestration of multiple neural systems integrated via specific white‐matter pathways, but there is limited understanding about whether these pathways relate differentially to reading performance depending on SES background. Kindergarten white‐matter FA and second‐grade reading outcomes were investigated in an SES‐diverse sample of 125 children. The three left‐hemisphere white‐matter tracts most associated with reading, and their right‐hemisphere homologs, were examined: arcuate fasciculus (AF), superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), and inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF). There was a significant and positive association between SES and fractional anisotropy (FA) in the bilateral ILF in kindergarten. SES moderated the association between kindergarten ILF and second grade reading performance, such that it was positive in lower‐SES children, but not significant in higher‐SES children. These results have implications for understanding the role of the environment in the development of the neural pathways that support reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: A functional region of left fusiform gyrus termed “the visual word form area” (VWFA) develops during reading acquisition to respond more strongly to printed words than to other visual stimuli. Here, we examined responses to letters among 5‐ and 6‐year‐old early kindergarten children (N = 48) with little or no school‐based reading instruction who varied in their reading ability. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure responses to individual letters, false fonts, and faces in left and right fusiform gyri. We then evaluated whether signal change and size (spatial extent) of letter‐sensitive cortex (greater activation for letters versus faces) and letter‐specific cortex (greater activation for letters versus false fonts) in these regions related to (a) standardized measures of word‐reading ability and (b) signal change and size of face‐sensitive cortex (fusiform face area or FFA; greater activation for faces versus letters). Greater letter specificity, but not letter sensitivity, in left fusiform gyrus correlated positively with word reading scores. Across children, in the left fusiform gyrus, greater size of letter‐sensitive cortex correlated with lesser size of FFA. These findings are the first to suggest that in beginning readers, development of letter responsivity in left fusiform cortex is associated with both better reading ability and also a reduction of the size of left FFA that may result in right‐hemisphere dominance for face perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Cognitive skills are associated with academic performance, but little is known about how to improve these skills in the classroom. Here, we present the results of a pilot study in which teachers were trained to engage students in cognitive skill practice through playing games. Fifth-grade students at an experimental charter school were randomly assigned to receive cognitive skill instruction ( CSI) or instruction in geography and typing. Students in the CSI group improved significantly more than the control group on a composite measure of cognitive skills. CSI was more effective for students with lower standardized test scores. Although there was no group effect on test scores, cognitive improvement correlated positively with test score improvement only in the CSI group. Beyond showing that cognitive skills can be improved in the classroom, this study provides lessons for the future of CSI, including changes to professional development and challenges for scalability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of neurocognitive mechanisms in single word reading was studied in children ages 8-10 years using ERPs combined with priming manipulations aimed at dissociating orthographic and phonological processes. Transposed-letter (TL) priming (barin-BRAIN vs. bosin-BRAIN) was used to assess orthographic processing, and pseudohomophone (PH) priming (brane-BRAIN vs. brant-BRAIN) was used to assess phonological processing. Children showed TL and PH priming effects on both the N250 and N400 ERP components, and the magnitude of TL priming correlated positively with reading ability, with better readers showing larger TL priming effects. Phonological priming, on the other hand, did not correlate with reading ability. The positive correlations between TL priming and reading ability in children points to a key role for flexible sublexical orthographic representations in reading development, in line with their hypothesized role in the efficient mapping of orthographic information onto semantic information in skilled readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective Many forms of epilepsy are associated with aberrant neuronal connections, but the relationship between such pathological connectivity and the underlying physiological predisposition to seizures is unclear. We sought to characterize the cortical excitability profile of a developmental form of epilepsy known to have structural and functional connectivity abnormalities. Methods We employed transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with simultaneous electroencephalographic (EEG) recording in 8 patients with epilepsy from periventricular nodular heterotopia and matched healthy controls. We used connectivity imaging findings to guide TMS targeting and compared the evoked responses to single-pulse stimulation from different cortical regions. Results Heterotopia patients with active epilepsy demonstrated a relatively augmented late cortical response that was greater than that of matched controls. This abnormality was specific to cortical regions with connectivity to subcortical heterotopic gray matter. Topographic mapping of the late response differences showed distributed cortical networks that were not limited to the stimulation site, and source analysis in 1 subject revealed that the generator of abnormal TMS-evoked activity overlapped with the spike and seizure onset zone. Interpretation Our findings indicate that patients with epilepsy from gray matter heterotopia have altered cortical physiology consistent with hyperexcitability, and that this abnormality is specifically linked to the presence of aberrant connectivity. These results support the idea that TMS-EEG could be a useful biomarker in epilepsy in gray matter heterotopia, expand our understanding of circuit mechanisms of epileptogenesis, and have potential implications for therapeutic neuromodulation in similar epileptic conditions associated with deep lesions. Ann Neurol 2015;77:487-503 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the time-course of reading single words in children and adults using masked repetition priming and the recording of event-related potentials. The N250 and N400 repetition priming effects were used to characterize form- and meaning-level processing, respectively. Children had larger amplitude N250 effects than adults for both shorter and longer duration primes. Children did not differ from adults on the N400 effect. The difference on the N250 suggests that automaticity for form processing is still maturing in children relative to adults, while the lack of differentiation on the N400 effect suggests that meaning processing is relatively mature by late childhood. The overall similarity in the children's repetition priming effects to adults' effects is in line with theories of reading acquisition, according to which children rapidly transition to an orthographic strategy for fast access to semantic information from print. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Joint attention behaviors include initiating one's own and responding to another's bid for joint attention to an object, person, or topic. Joint attention abilities in autism are pervasively atypical, correlate with development of language and social abilities, and discriminate children with autism from other developmental disorders. Despite the importance of these behaviors, the neural correlates of joint attention in individuals with autism remain unclear. This paucity of data is likely due to the inherent challenge of acquiring data during a real-time social interaction. We used a novel experimental set-up in which participants engaged with an experimenter in an interactive face-to-face joint attention game during fMRI data acquisition. Both initiating and responding to joint attention behaviors were examined as well as a solo attention (SA) control condition. Participants included adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) ( n = 13), a mean age- and sex-matched neurotypical group ( n = 14), and a separate group of neurotypical adults ( n = 22). Significant differences were found between groups within social-cognitive brain regions, including dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dMPFC) and right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), during the RJA as compared to SA conditions. Region-of-interest analyses revealed a lack of signal differentiation between joint attention and control conditions within left pSTS and dMPFC in individuals with ASD. Within the pSTS, this lack of differentiation was characterized by reduced activation during joint attention and relative hyper-activation during SA. These findings suggest a possible failure of developmental neural specialization within the STS and dMPFC to joint attention in ASD. Hum Brain Mapp 34:2511-2523, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Periventricular nodular heterotopia (PNH) is a malformation of cortical development associated with epilepsy and dyslexia. Evidence suggests that heterotopic gray matter can be functional in brain malformations and that connectivity abnormalities may be important in these disorders. We hypothesized that nodular heterotopia develop abnormal connections and systematically investigated the structural and functional connectivity of heterotopia in patients with PNH. Methods: Eleven patients were studied using diffusion tensor tractography and resting-state functional connectivity MRI with bold oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) imaging. Fiber tracks with a terminus within heterotopic nodules were visualized to determine structural connectivity, and brain regions demonstrating resting-state functional correlations to heterotopic nodules were analyzed. Relationships between these connectivity results and measures of clinical epilepsy and cognitive disability were examined. Key Findings: A majority of heterotopia (69%) showed structural connectivity to discrete regions of overlying cortex, and almost all (96%) showed functional connectivity to these regions (mean peak correlation coefficient 0.61). Heterotopia also demonstrated connectivity to regions of contralateral cortex, other heterotopic nodules, ipsilateral but nonoverlying cortex, and deep gray matter structures or the cerebellum. Patients with the longest durations of epilepsy had a higher degree of abnormal functional connectivity (p = 0.036). Significance: Most heterotopic nodules in PNH are structurally and functionally connected to overlying cortex, and the strength of abnormal connectivity is higher among patients with the longest duration of epilepsy. Along with prior evidence that cortico-cortical tract defects underlie dyslexia in this disorder, the current findings suggest that altered connectivity is likely a critical substrate for neurologic dysfunction in brain malformations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Processing the self-relevance of information facilitates recall. Similarly, processing close-other-related information facilitates recall to a lesser degree than processing self-relevant information. This memory advantage may be viewed as an index of the degree to which the representation of self is differentiated from representations of close others. To test developmental hypotheses concerning the self, this study examined the relation of memory for self- and mother-referentially processed information in participants age 7–13 years (Experiment 1: N = 37; Experiment 2: N = 14). Memory for words encoded with reference to oneself increases with age, relative to memory for words encoded with reference to one’s mother. When used as an individual difference measure, the difference in self versus mother memory correlates with regions of the rostral anterior cingulate associated with affective salience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Purpose: To determine the utility of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in preoperative lateralization of memory function in patients with medial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE). Methods: Nine patients with MTLE underwent standard preoperative assessment including video-EEG and intracarotid amytal testing (IAT). fMRI was performed while subjects encoded four types of stimuli (patterns, faces, scenes, and words). Activation maps were created for each subject representing areas more active for novel than for repeated stimuli. Regions of interest were drawn around the MTL in individual subjects, suprathreshold voxels were counted, and an asymmetry index was calculated. Results: In eight of nine subjects, lateralization of memory encoding by fMRI was concordant with that obtained from the IAT. Group-level analysis demonstrated greater activation in the MTL contralateral to the seizure focus such that in the left MTLE group, verbal encoding engaged the right MTL, whereas in the right MTLE group, nonverbal encoding engaged the left MTL. Conclusions: fMRI is a valid tool for assessing of memory lateralization in patients with MTLE and may therefore allow noninvasive preoperative evaluation of memory lateralization. FMRI revealed that memory encoding may be reorganized to the contralateral MTL in patients with MTLE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of amnesic Korsakoff patients in delay eyeblink classical conditioning was compared with that of recovered chronic alcoholic subjects and healthy normal control subjects. Normal control subjects exhibited acquisition of conditioned responses (CRs) to a previously neutral, conditioned tone stimulus (CS) following repeated pairings with an unconditioned air-puff stimulus, and demonstrated extinction of CRs when the CS was subsequently presented alone. Both amnesic Korsakoff patients and recovered chronic alcoholic subjects demonstrated an impairment in their ability to acquire CRs. These results indicate that the preservation of delay eyeblink conditioning in amnesia must depend on the underlying neuropathology of the amnesic syndrome. It is known that patients with amnesia caused by medial temporal lobe pathology have preserved conditioning. We have now demonstrated that patients with anmesia caused by Korsakoff's syndrome, as well as recovered chronic alcoholic subjects, have impaired conditioning. This impairment is most likely caused by cerebellar deterioration resulting from years of alcohol abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working memory (WM) capacity reflects executive functions associated with performance on a wide range of cognitive tasks and education outcomes, including mathematics achievement, and is associated with dorsolateral prefrontal and parietal cortices. Here we asked if family income is associated with variation in the functional brain organization of WM capacity among adolescents, and whether that variation is associated with performance on a statewide test of academic achievement in mathematics. Participants were classified into higher-income and lower-income groups based on family income, and performed a WM task with a parametric manipulation of WM load (N-back task) during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behaviorally, the higher-income group had greater WM capacity and higher mathematics achievement scores. Neurally, the higher-income group showed greater activation as a function of WM load in bilateral prefrontal, parietal, and other regions, although the lower-income group exhibited greater activation at the lowest load. Both groups exhibited positive correlations between parietal activations and mathematics achievement scores, but only the higher-income group exhibited a positive correlation between prefrontal activations and mathematics scores. Most of these findings were maintained when higher- and lower-income groups were matched on WM task performance or nonverbal IQ. Findings indicate that the functional neural architecture of WM varies with family income and is associated with education measures of mathematics achievement., (© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Research suggests that early identification of developmental dyslexia is important for mitigating the negative effects of dyslexia, including reduced educational attainment and increased socioemotional difficulties. The strongest pre-literacy predictors of dyslexia are rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological awareness (PA), letter knowledge, and verbal short-term memory. The relationship among these constructs has been debated, and several theories have emerged to explain the unique role of each in reading ability/disability. Furthermore, the stability of identification of risk based on these measures varies widely across studies, due in part to the different cut-offs employed to designate risk. We applied a latent profile analysis technique with a diverse sample of 1215 kindergarten and pre-kindergarten students from 20 schools, to investigate whether PA, RAN, letter knowledge, and verbal short-term memory measures differentiated between homogenous profiles of performance on these measures. Six profiles of performance emerged from the data: average performers, below average performers, high performers, PA risk, RAN risk, and double-deficit risk (both PA and RAN). A latent class regression model was employed to investigate the longitudinal stability of these groups in a representative subset of children (n = 95) nearly two years later, at the end of 1st grade. Profile membership in the spring semester of pre-kindergarten or fall semester of kindergarten was significantly predictive of later reading performance, with the specific patterns of performance on the different constructs remaining stable across the years. There was a higher frequency of PA and RAN deficits in children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. There was no evidence for the IQ-achievement discrepancy criterion traditionally used to diagnose dyslexia. Our results support the feasibility of early identification of dyslexia risk and point to the heterogeneity of risk profiles. These findings carry important implications for improving outcomes for children with dyslexia, based on more targeted interventions., (© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)