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Insights into acquired reading disability: White matter correlates of reading after childhood hemispherectomy

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Amy Maguire1,2,5 (amaguire1@mgb.org), Adriana Azor2,5, Rebecca Marks3, Steven Meisler4, John Gabrieli5, Joanna Christodoulou2,5; 1Massachusetts General Hospital, 2MGH Institute of Health Professions, 3Purdue University, 4University of Pennsylvania, 5Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Developmental reading disabilities (e.g., dyslexia) have been well-studied, but acquired reading disabilities (A-RD) have received less attention, leaving students with A-RD underserved. Individuals post-hemispherectomy comprise a unique population for studying A-RD because surgery forces reliance on a single hemisphere for all cognitive functions, even when the remaining hemisphere is not typically associated with language dominance. This study aimed to characterize reading-related white matter structures (arcuate fasciculus (AF); inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF)) and their relation to reading measures in children and young adults post-hemispherectomy. We predicted significant correlations between decoding skills and AF microstructure and between sight word skills and ILF microstructure. We measured neurostructural and reading characteristics for N=16 individuals (7-23yrs; 11 right-hemispherectomy, 5 left-hemispherectomy), representing the largest sample to date of post-hemispherectomy patients analyzed using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and standardized reading measures. A significant positive correlation was found between the remaining AF’s fractional anisotropy (FA) and elision (r=0.72, p <.05), a decoding subskill that enables “sounding out” unfamiliar words. Moderate positive correlations (r > 0.54) were found between arcuate FA and word reading (real and pseudoword) scores . There were no significant correlations between ILF and reading scores. There were significant negative correlations between time since surgery and: AF-MD (r=-0.75, p<.05), ILF-MD (r=-0.81, p<.01), and ILF radial diffusivity (r=-0.83, p<.01). Our findings suggest that microstructural properties of the AF are related to word reading skill development post-hemispherectomy; ILF may support reading development post-hemispherectomy differently than in children with two hemispheres.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Development & aging

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