Cooperative Mechanism Of White Matter Pathway In Chinese Reading

Skilled reading processing not only relies on the activation of wide range of brain regions,such as temporal-occipital,temporal-parietal,anterior temporal region and inferior frontal cortex,but also depends on the specific white matter fibers which connect these regions to deliver information of phonology,semantics and orthography.Ventral-lexical and dorsal-sublexical pathways in reading network,consistent with the classic Dual Route Model,involve in exception words and regular word reading respectively.Previous study of reading-related white matter fiber mostly focus on the relation between the integrity of bilateral fiber and pure reading test among native English speakers.However,these results could not be generalized to Chinese reading due to the morphological differences between Chinese and English besides dynamic nature of reading process.In this paper,high angular resolution diffusion imaging was adopted which could minimize the impact of cross fibers to explore the cooperative mechanism among ventral-lexical pathways(including inferior longitudinal fasciculus,uncinate fasciculus and inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus),dorsal-sublexical pathways(including arcuate fasciculus,superior longitudinal fasciculus)and commissural fibers(Fmajor,Fminor)in Chinese reading for the first time.The behavior experiment results revealed the similar reading performance between the skilled reader and slow reader,namely that they all showed longer reaction time,lower accuracy ratios with the increasing constitutive proportion of the exception word in the reading test.Meanwhile,the accuracy ratios of skilled reader group were significantly higher than the other.As to the white matter microstructure,we found significant positive correlation between reaction time and quantitative anisotropy(QA)of right inferior longitudinal fasciculus,negative correlation between left uncinate fasciculus in the skilled reader group.In addition,there were significant positively correlation between reaction time and QA of Fmajor,accuracy ratio and Fminor in the slow reader group.While we found no significant correlation betweenbehavioral performance and dorsal-sublexical pathways.Therefore,it could be concluded that difference of reading ability was modulated by the cooperative mechanism of reading-related white matter pathway,namely skilled readers rely on the ventral-lexical pathways,while slow readers require on more information transfer between two hemispheres in reading aloud task.In general,this study offers empirical evidence for exploring the inner relationships between white matter microstructure and Chinese reading,and provides practical insights for Chinese reading teaching.