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Fraga-González G, Di Pietro SV, Pleisch G, Walitza S, Brandeis D, Karipidis II, Brem S. Visual Occipito-Temporal N1 Sensitivity to Digits Across Elementary School. Front Hum Neurosci 2022; 16:887413. [PMID: 35959243 PMCID: PMC9360418 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2022.887413] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/01/2022] [Accepted: 06/20/2022] [Indexed: 11/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Number processing abilities are important for academic and personal development. The course of initial specialization of ventral occipito-temporal cortex (vOTC) sensitivity to visual number processing is crucial for the acquisition of numeric and arithmetic skills. We examined the visual N1, the electrophysiological correlate of vOTC activation across five time points in kindergarten (T1, mean age 6.60 years), middle and end of first grade (T2, 7.38 years; T3, 7.68 years), second grade (T4, 8.28 years), and fifth grade (T5, 11.40 years). A combination of cross-sectional and longitudinal EEG data of a total of 62 children (35 female) at varying familial risk for dyslexia were available to form groups of 23, 22, 27, 27, and 42 participants for each of the five time points. The children performed a target detection task which included visual presentation of single digits (DIG), false fonts (FF), and letters (LET) to derive measures for coarse (DIG vs. FF) and fine (DIG vs. LET) digit sensitive processing across development. The N1 amplitude analyses indicated coarse and fine sensitivity characterized by a stronger N1 to digits than false fonts across all five time points, and stronger N1 to digits than letters at all but the second (T2) time point. In addition, lower arithmetic skills were associated with stronger coarse N1 digit sensitivity over the left hemisphere in second grade (T4), possibly reflecting allocation of more attentional resources or stronger reliance on the verbal system in children with poorer arithmetic skills. To summarize, our results show persistent visual N1 sensitivity to digits that is already present early on in pre-school and remains stable until fifth grade. This pattern of digit sensitivity development clearly differs from the relatively sharp rise and fall of the visual N1 sensitivity to words or letters between kindergarten and middle of elementary school and suggests unique developmental trajectories for visual processing of written characters that are relevant to numeracy and literacy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gorka Fraga-González
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Sarah V. Di Pietro
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Georgette Pleisch
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Susanne Walitza
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Daniel Brandeis
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- MR-Center, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
| | - Iliana I. Karipidis
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, United States
| | - Silvia Brem
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- Neuroscience Center Zurich, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- MR-Center, Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
- *Correspondence: Silvia Brem,
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Uno T, Kasai T, Seki A. The Developmental Change of Print‐Tuned
N170
in Highly Transparent Writing Systems
1. JAPANESE PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH 2021. [DOI: 10.1111/jpr.12397] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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The rise and fall of rapid occipito-temporal sensitivity to letters: Transient specialization through elementary school. Dev Cogn Neurosci 2021; 49:100958. [PMID: 34010761 PMCID: PMC8141525 DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2021.100958] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/20/2020] [Revised: 04/26/2021] [Accepted: 05/02/2021] [Indexed: 12/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Letters, foundational units of alphabetic writing systems, are quintessential to human culture. The ability to read, indispensable to perform in today’s society, necessitates a reorganization of visual cortex for fast letter recognition, but the developmental course of this process has not yet been characterized. Here, we show the emergence of visual sensitivity to letters across five electroencephalography measurements from kindergarten and throughout elementary school and relate this development to emerging reading skills. We examined the visual N1, the electrophysiological correlate of ventral occipito-temporal cortex activation in 65 children at varying familial risk for dyslexia. N1 letter sensitivity emerged in first grade, when letter sound knowledge gains were most pronounced and decayed shortly after when letter knowledge is consolidated, showing an inverted U-shaped development. This trajectory can be interpreted within an interactive framework that underscores the influence of top-down predictions. While the N1 amplitudes to letters correlated with letter sound knowledge at the beginning of learning, no association between the early N1 letter response and later reading skills was found. In summary, the current findings provide an important reference point for our neuroscientific understanding of learning trajectories and the process of visual specialization during skill learning.
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Xu W, Kolozsvari OB, Monto SP, Hämäläinen JA. Brain Responses to Letters and Speech Sounds and Their Correlations With Cognitive Skills Related to Reading in Children. Front Hum Neurosci 2018; 12:304. [PMID: 30127729 PMCID: PMC6088176 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00304] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/30/2018] [Accepted: 07/16/2018] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
Letter-speech sound (LSS) integration is crucial for initial stages of reading acquisition. However, the relationship between cortical organization for supporting LSS integration, including unimodal and multimodal processes, and reading skills in early readers remains unclear. In the present study, we measured brain responses to Finnish letters and speech sounds from 29 typically developing Finnish children in a child-friendly audiovisual integration experiment using magnetoencephalography. Brain source activations in response to auditory, visual and audiovisual stimuli as well as audiovisual integration response were correlated with reading skills and cognitive skills predictive of reading development after controlling for the effect of age. Regression analysis showed that from the brain measures, the auditory late response around 400 ms showed the largest association with phonological processing and rapid automatized naming abilities. In addition, audiovisual integration effect was most pronounced in the left and right temporoparietal regions and the activities in several of these temporoparietal regions correlated with reading and writing skills. Our findings indicated the important role of temporoparietal regions in the early phase of learning to read and their unique contribution to reading skills.
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Affiliation(s)
- Weiyong Xu
- Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
- Jyväskylä Centre for Interdisciplinary Brain Research, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
| | - Orsolya B. Kolozsvari
- Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
- Jyväskylä Centre for Interdisciplinary Brain Research, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
| | - Simo P. Monto
- Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
- Jyväskylä Centre for Interdisciplinary Brain Research, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
| | - Jarmo A. Hämäläinen
- Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
- Jyväskylä Centre for Interdisciplinary Brain Research, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
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Asanowicz D, Verleger R, Kruse L, Beier K, Śmigasiewicz K. A right hemisphere advantage at early cortical stages of processing alphanumeric stimuli. Evidence from electrophysiology. Brain Cogn 2017; 113:40-55. [DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2017.01.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/01/2016] [Revised: 01/10/2017] [Accepted: 01/11/2017] [Indexed: 11/30/2022]
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BACS: The Brussels Artificial Character Sets for studies in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Behav Res Methods 2017; 49:2093-2112. [DOI: 10.3758/s13428-016-0844-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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Madec S, Le Goff K, Anton JL, Longcamp M, Velay JL, Nazarian B, Roth M, Courrieu P, Grainger J, Rey A. Brain correlates of phonological recoding of visual symbols. Neuroimage 2016; 132:359-372. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.02.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/05/2015] [Revised: 01/26/2016] [Accepted: 02/07/2016] [Indexed: 10/22/2022] Open
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Bann SA, Herdman AT. Event Related Potentials Reveal Early Phonological and Orthographic Processing of Single Letters in Letter-Detection and Letter-Rhyme Paradigms. Front Hum Neurosci 2016; 10:176. [PMID: 27148023 PMCID: PMC4840210 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00176] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/27/2016] [Accepted: 04/06/2016] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
INTRODUCTION When and where phonological processing occurs in the brain is still under some debate. Most paired-rhyme and phonological priming studies used word stimuli, which involve complex neural networks for word recognition and semantics. This study investigates early (<300 ms) and late (>300 ms) orthographic and phonological processing of letters. METHODS Fifteen participants aged 20-35 engaged in three two-forced choice experiments, one letter-detection (LetterID) and two letter-rhyme (Paired-Rhyme and Letter-Rhyme) tasks. From the EEG recordings, event related potential (ERP) differences within and across task stimuli were found. We also calculated the global field power (GFP) for each participant. Accuracies and reaction times were also measured from their button presses for each task. RESULTS Behavioral: Reaction times were 18 ms faster to letter than pseudoletter stimuli, and 27 ms faster to rhyme than nonrhyme stimuli. ERP/GFP In the LetterID task, grand-mean evoked potentials (EPs) showed typical P1, N1, P2, and P3 waveform morphologies to letter and pseudoletter stimuli, with GFPs to pseudoletters being greater than letters from 160-600 ms. Across both rhyme tasks, there were greater negativities for nonrhyme than for rhyme stimuli at 145 ms and 426 ms. The P2 effect for rhyme stimuli was smaller than letter stimuli when compared across tasks. CONCLUSION Differences in early processing of letters vs. pseudoletters between 130-190 ms suggest that letters are processed earlier and perhaps faster in the brain than pseudoletters. The P2 effect between letter and rhyme stimuli likely reflect sublexical phonological processing. Together, findings from our study fill in evidence for the temporal dynamics of orthographic and phonological processing of single letters.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sewon A. Bann
- School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, University of British ColumbiaVancouver, BC, Canada
| | - Anthony T. Herdman
- School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, University of British ColumbiaVancouver, BC, Canada
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Yoncheva YN, Wise J, McCandliss B. Hemispheric specialization for visual words is shaped by attention to sublexical units during initial learning. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2015; 145-146:23-33. [PMID: 25935827 PMCID: PMC4538939 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2015.04.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 33] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/08/2014] [Revised: 04/02/2015] [Accepted: 04/04/2015] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
Selective attention to grapheme-phoneme mappings during learning can impact the circuitry subsequently recruited during reading. Here we trained literate adults to read two novel scripts of glyph words containing embedded letters under different instructions. For one script, learners linked each embedded letter to its corresponding sound within the word (grapheme-phoneme focus); for the other, decoding was prevented so entire words had to be memorized. Post-training, ERPs were recorded during a reading task on the trained words within each condition and on untrained but decodable (transfer) words. Within this condition, reaction-time patterns suggested both trained and transfer words were accessed via sublexical units, yet a left-lateralized, late ERP response showed an enhanced left lateralization for transfer words relative to trained words, potentially reflecting effortful decoding. Collectively, these findings show that selective attention to grapheme-phoneme mappings during learning drives the lateralization of circuitry that supports later word recognition. This study thus provides a model example of how different instructional approaches to the same material may impact changes in brain circuitry.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuliya N Yoncheva
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Child Study Center, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York, NY, United States
| | - Jessica Wise
- Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States
| | - Bruce McCandliss
- Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States.
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Okumura Y, Kasai T, Murohashi H. Attention that covers letters is necessary for the left-lateralization of an early print-tuned ERP in Japanese hiragana. Neuropsychologia 2015; 69:22-30. [DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.01.026] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2014] [Revised: 01/14/2015] [Accepted: 01/18/2015] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
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Park J, Chiang C, Brannon EM, Woldorff MG. Experience-dependent hemispheric specialization of letters and numbers is revealed in early visual processing. J Cogn Neurosci 2014; 26:2239-49. [PMID: 24669789 PMCID: PMC4261939 DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_00621] [Citation(s) in RCA: 28] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/04/2022]
Abstract
Recent fMRI research has demonstrated that letters and numbers are preferentially processed in distinct regions and hemispheres in the visual cortex. In particular, the left visual cortex preferentially processes letters compared with numbers, whereas the right visual cortex preferentially processes numbers compared with letters. Because letters and numbers are cultural inventions and are otherwise physically arbitrary, such a double dissociation is strong evidence for experiential effects on neural architecture. Here, we use the high temporal resolution of ERPs to investigate the temporal dynamics of the neural dissociation between letters and numbers. We show that the divergence between ERP traces to letters and numbers emerges very early in processing. Letters evoked greater N1 waves (latencies 140-170 msec) than did numbers over left occipital channels, whereas numbers evoked greater N1s than letters over the right, suggesting letters and numbers are preferentially processed in opposite hemispheres early in visual encoding. Moreover, strings of letters, but not single letters, elicited greater P2 ERP waves (starting around 250 msec) than numbers did over the left hemisphere, suggesting that the visual cortex is tuned to selectively process combinations of letters, but not numbers, further along in the visual processing stream. Additionally, the processing of both of these culturally defined stimulus types differentiated from similar but unfamiliar visual stimulus forms (false fonts) even earlier in the processing stream (the P1 at 100 msec). These findings imply major cortical specialization processes within the visual system driven by experience with reading and mathematics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joonkoo Park
- Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University
| | - Crystal Chiang
- Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University
- Trinity College of Arts & Science, Duke University
| | - Elizabeth M. Brannon
- Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University
| | - Marty G. Woldorff
- Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University
- Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University
- Department of Psychiatry, Duke University
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12
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Investigating letter recognition in the brain by varying typeface: An event-related potential study. Brain Cogn 2014; 88:83-9. [DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2014.05.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/23/2014] [Revised: 05/02/2014] [Accepted: 05/02/2014] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
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