[Efficacy of decoding training for children with difficulty reading hiragana].

Objective: The present study aimed to clarify the efficacy of decoding training focusing on the correspondence between written symbols and their readings for children with difficulty reading hiragana (Japanese syllabary).

Methods: Thirty-five children with difficulty reading hiragana were selected from among 367 first-grade elementary school students using a reading aloud test and were then divided into intervention (n=15) and control (n=20) groups. The intervention comprised 5 minutes of decoding training each day for a period of 3 weeks using an original program on a personal computer.

[Line scan diffusion weighted imaging (LSDI) on 0.2 Tesla MRI of the normal cervical cord in vivo: preliminary study].

Diffusion weighted imaging(DWI) has been widely performed in the brain. However, DWI of the spinal cord is rarely performed because of technical and physiologic problems. Line scan diffusion weighted imaging(LSDI) is spin-echo based and relatively insensitive to susceptibility artifacts.