Regional amplitude of the low-frequency fluctuations at rest predicts word-reading skill

Abstract

Individuals' reading skills are critical for their educational development, but variation in reading skills is known to be large. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the role of spontaneous brain activity at rest in individual differences in reading skills in a large sample of participants (N=263). Specifically, we correlated individuals' word-reading skill with their fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) of the whole brain at rest and found that the fALFFs of both the bilateral precentral gyrus (PCG) and superior temporal plane (STP) were positively associated with reading skills. The fALFF-reading association observed in these two regions remained after controlling for general cognitive abilities and in-scanner head motion. A cross-validation confirmed that the individual differences in word-reading skills were reliably correlated with the fALFF values of the bilateral PCG and STP. A follow-up task-based fMRI experiment revealed that the reading-related regions overlapped with regions showing a higher response to sentences than to pseudo-sentences (strings of pseudo-words), suggesting the resting-state brain activity partly captures the characteristics of task-based brain activity. In short, our study provides one of the first pieces of evidence that links spontaneous brain activity to reading behavior and offers an easy-to-access neural marker for evaluating reading skill.

Keywords: fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations; precentral gyrus; resting state fMRI; superior temporal plane; word reading.