Premium
Larger brain and white matter volumes in children with developmental language disorder
Author(s) -
Herbert Martha R.,
Ziegler David A.,
Makris Nikos,
Bakardjiev Anna,
Hodgson James,
Adrien Kristen T.,
Kennedy David N.,
Filipek Pauline A.,
Caviness Verne S.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
developmental science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.801
H-Index - 127
eISSN - 1467-7687
pISSN - 1363-755X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-7687.00291
Subject(s) - psychology , white matter , brain size , neuroscience , autism spectrum disorder , autism , developmental psychology , audiology , magnetic resonance imaging , medicine , radiology
Developmental language disorder (DLD) is predominantly a language disorder, but children with DLD also manifest non‐language impairments, and neuroanatomical abnormalities have been found in multiple areas of the brain, not all language‐associated. We therefore performed a whole brain general segmentation analysis of all major brain regions on MRI scans of 24 DLD subjects (16M, 8F) and 30 controls (15M, 15F), ages 5.7 to 11.3 years. Children with DLD showed increased total brain volume, driven predominantly by a substantial increase in the volume of cerebral white matter. Cerebral cortex and caudate were relatively but not absolutely smaller in DLD. These findings are discussed in relation to issues of specificity vs. generality as they arise in debates about (1) modular vs. general processing deficits and connectionist modeling in DLD, (2) language‐specific vs. pervasive, non‐specific deficits in DLD and (3) specificity of the disorder vs. overlap with other disorders, notably autism.