NSF/SBE-BSF: Biological mechanisms underlying the acquisition of reading skills

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

Many aspects of human behavior such as walking, smiling, and learning a language develop naturally as children experience the world and people around them. However reading is not a naturally occurring development. Rather, learning to read requires instruction, training, and practice. The goal of this funded project is to investigate how children's brains change over the course of two months of reading instruction. The present proposal capitalizes on cutting-edge measurement techniques and software algorithms that the research team has developed, to characterize the biological processes that underlie learning to read. Children between six and twelve years of age will be followed longitudinally during an eight-week, intensive reading instruction program. Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) measurements that are sensitive to changes in myelination, the creation of new tissue macromolecules, and the packing density of axons within the white matter will be used to monitor changes in brain tissue structure during learning. Functional MRI will be used to model how the computations performed by the brain's reading circuitry change in response to reading instruction. By integrating multiple measurement modalities, and sampling children of different ages, this project will determine how the brain's capacity for experience-dependent plasticity changes over the course of elementary school and whether learning can be predicted based on a model of a child's reading circuitry. Toward this end, the project tackles 3 major challenges: (1) Determine what properties of human white matter change in response to reading instruction; (2) Measure how the brain's capacity for plasticity changes over development; and (3) Model the relationship between changes in brain circuit structure and cortical computation. Understanding how the developing brain builds circuits to rapidly translate printed symbols into meaning is an important scientific challenge with implications for education and the treatment of reading disabilities. A deeper understanding of the interplay between biological and cognitive development will lead to innovative approaches to education that are tailored to a child's unique pattern of brain maturation.