Premium
Reading difficulty is associated with failure to lateralize temporooccipital function
Author(s) -
Tailby Chris,
Weintrob David L.,
Saling Michael M.,
Fitzgerald Carly,
Jackson Graeme D.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
epilepsia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.687
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1528-1167
pISSN - 0013-9580
DOI - 10.1111/epi.12607
Subject(s) - epilepsy , functional magnetic resonance imaging , reading (process) , psychology , neuroscience , lateralization of brain function , audiology , abnormality , cortex (anatomy) , functional imaging , cognitive psychology , medicine , psychiatry , linguistics , philosophy
Summary Objective Studies of focal epilepsy have revealed abnormalities of language organization; however, little attention has been paid to disorders of reading in this group. We hypothesized that language functional magnetic resonance imaging ( fMRI) would reveal differences in language organization between focal epilepsy patients with and without reading difficulties. Methods We conducted language fMRI studies of 10 focal epilepsy patients with reading difficulties, 34 focal epilepsy patients without reading difficulties, and 42 healthy controls. Results We defined regions of interests on the basis of activation patterns on an orthographic lexical retrieval task. Comparison of activations within these ROI s on a second Noun‐Verb task revealed epilepsy‐related effects (relative to healthy controls: reduced activation in left inferior frontal cortex), as well as greater activation in the right temporooccipital cortex specific to the reading difficulty group. Significance These findings identify a focal epilepsy effect in the left frontal region (present in patients with and without reading difficulties), and a functional abnormality specific to the reading difficulty group localized to right temporooccipital cortex—a region implicated in lexicosemantic processing. Our observations suggest a failure of left hemisphere specialization among focal epilepsy patients with reading difficulties. A PowerPoint slide summarizing this article is available for download in the Supporting Information section here .