Developmental Differences of Structural Connectivity and Effective Connectivity in Semantic Judgments of Chinese Characters

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Tai-Li Chou¹  Li-Ying Fan⁴  Yung-Chin Hsu⁶  Yu-Jen Chen⁶  Wen-Yih Isaac Tseng⁷  Yu-Chun Lo⁸ 

[1] Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States;Department of Education, National Taipei University of Education, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan;Department of Thanatology and Health Counseling, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taipei, Taiwan;Graduate Institute of Brain and Mind Sciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan;Institute of Medical Device and Imaging, National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan;Molecular Imaging Center, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan;Research Center of Brain and Consciousness, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan;The Ph.D. Program for Neural Regenerative Medicine, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan;

关键词: meaning;    semantics;    structural connectivity;    effective connectivity;    development;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnhum.2020.00233

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Previous studies have investigated the developmental differences of semantic processing regarding brain activation between adults and children. However, little is known about whether the patterns of structural connectivity and effective connectivity differ between adults and children during semantic processing. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion spectrum imaging (DSI), and dynamic causal modeling (DCM) were used to study the developmental differences of brain activation, structural connectivity, and effective connectivity during semantic judgments. Twenty-six children (8- to 12-year-olds) and 26 adults were asked to indicate if character pairs were related in meaning. Compared to children, adults showed greater activation in the left ventral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left middle temporal gyrus (MTG). Also, adults had significantly greater structural connectivity in the left ventral pathway (inferior frontal occipital fasciculus, IFOF) than children. Moreover, adults showed significantly stronger bottom-up effects from left fusiform gyrus (FG) to ventral IFG than children in the related condition. In conclusion, our findings suggest that age-related increases in brain activation (ventral IFG and MTG), IFOF, and effective connectivity (from FG to ventral IFG) might be associated with the bottom-up influence of orthographic representations on retrieving semantic representations for processing Chinese characters.

【 授权许可】

Unknown