An executive-functions-based reading training enhances sensory-motor systems integration during reading fluency in children with dyslexia.

The Simple View of Reading model suggests that intact language processing and word decoding lead to proficient reading comprehension, with recent studies pointing at executive functions as an important component contributing to reading proficiency. Here, we aimed to determine the underlying mechanism(s) for these changes. Participants include 120 8- to 12-year-old children (n = 55 with dyslexia, n = 65 typical readers) trained on an executive functions-based reading program, including pre/postfunctional MRI and behavioral data collection.

Cognitive deficits and altered functional brain network organization in pediatric brain tumor patients.

Survivors of pediatric brain tumors experience significant cognitive deficits from their diagnosis and treatment. The exact mechanisms of cognitive injury are poorly understood, and validated predictors of long-term cognitive outcome are lacking. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging allows for the study of the spontaneous fluctuations in bulk neural activity, providing insight into brain organization and function.

Probabilistic mapping of human functional brain networks identifies regions of high group consensus.

Many recent developments surrounding the functional network organization of the human brain have focused on data that have been averaged across groups of individuals. While such group-level approaches have shed considerable light on the brain's large-scale distributed systems, they conceal individual differences in network organization, which recent work has demonstrated to be common and widespread. This individual variability produces noise in group analyses, which may average together regions that are part of different functional systems across participants, limiting interpretability.

Default-mode network streams for coupling to language and control systems.

The human brain is organized into large-scale networks identifiable using resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC). These functional networks correspond with broad cognitive domains; for example, the Default-mode network (DMN) is engaged during internally oriented cognition. However, functional networks may contain hierarchical substructures corresponding with more specific cognitive functions.

Removal of high frequency contamination from motion estimates in single-band fMRI saves data without biasing functional connectivity.

Denoising fMRI data requires assessment of frame-to-frame head motion and removal of the biases motion introduces. This is usually done through analysis of the parameters calculated during retrospective head motion correction (i.e.

High-fidelity mapping of repetition-related changes in the parietal memory network.

fMRI studies of human memory have identified a "parietal memory network" (PMN) that displays distinct responses to novel and familiar stimuli, typically deactivating during initial encoding but robustly activating during retrieval. The small size of PMN regions, combined with their proximity to the neighboring default mode network, makes a targeted assessment of their responses in highly sampled subjects important for understanding information processing within the network. Here, we describe an experiment in which participants made semantic decisions about repeatedly-presented stimuli, assessing PMN BOLD responses as items transitioned from experimentally novel to repeated.

Children Use Regions in the Visual Processing and Executive Function Networks during a Subsequent Memory Reading Task.

Memory encoding is a critical process for memory function, which is foundational for cognitive functioning including reading, and has been extensively studied using subsequent memory tasks. Research in adults using such tasks indicates the participation of visual and cognitive-control systems in remembered versus forgotten words. However, given the known developmental trajectories of these systems, the functional neuroanatomy of memory encoding in children may be different than in adults.

Spatial and Temporal Organization of the Individual Human Cerebellum.

The cerebellum contains the majority of neurons in the human brain and is unique for its uniform cytoarchitecture, absence of aerobic glycolysis, and role in adaptive plasticity. Despite anatomical and physiological differences between the cerebellum and cerebral cortex, group-average functional connectivity studies have identified networks related to specific functions in both structures. Recently, precision functional mapping of individuals revealed that functional networks in the cerebral cortex exhibit measurable individual specificity.

Functional Brain Networks Are Dominated by Stable Group and Individual Factors, Not Cognitive or Daily Variation.

The organization of human brain networks can be measured by capturing correlated brain activity with fMRI. There is considerable interest in understanding how brain networks vary across individuals or neuropsychiatric populations or are altered during the performance of specific behaviors. However, the plausibility and validity of such measurements is dependent on the extent to which functional networks are stable over time or are state dependent.

Precision Functional Mapping of Individual Human Brains.

Human functional MRI (fMRI) research primarily focuses on analyzing data averaged across groups, which limits the detail, specificity, and clinical utility of fMRI resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and task-activation maps. To push our understanding of functional brain organization to the level of individual humans, we assembled a novel MRI dataset containing 5 hr of RSFC data, 6 hr of task fMRI, multiple structural MRIs, and neuropsychological tests from each of ten adults. Using these data, we generated ten high-fidelity, individual-specific functional connectomes.

Cognitive Training for Adults With Bothersome Tinnitus: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Individuals with tinnitus have poorer working memory, slower processing speeds and reaction times, and deficiencies in selective attention, all of which interfere with readiness and performance. Brain Fitness Program-Tinnitus (BFP-T) is a cognitive training program specially designed to exploit neuroplasticity for preservation and expansion of cognitive health in adults with tinnitus.

Objective: To evaluate the effect of the BFP-T on tinnitus.

The Feasibility of Using Metacognitive Strategy Training to Improve Cognitive Performance and Neural Connectivity in Women with Chemotherapy-Induced Cognitive Impairment.

Objective: To evaluate the feasibility and preliminary effect of metacognitive strategy training (MCST) on cognitive performance and on neural connectivity in the frontoparietal network in women with chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment (CICI) following treatment for breast cancer.

Methods: A single-group pre/post study was conducted. After completing the baseline assessment battery and neuroimaging, the participants completed a 12-session MCST intervention.

Cognitive impairment after chemotherapy related to atypical network architecture for executive control.

Objectives: A common complaint of cancer patients is the experience of cognitive difficulty during and after chemotherapy. We hypothesized that cognitive impairment may result from dysfunction in large-scale brain networks, particularly those involved in attentional control.

Methods: Using a case-control design, this study includes women with a history of invasive ductal or lobular triple-negative breast cancer who completed standard adjuvant chemotherapy within 2 years of study entry.

Unmasking Language Lateralization in Human Brain Intrinsic Activity.

Lateralization of function is a fundamental feature of the human brain as exemplified by the left hemisphere dominance of language. Despite the prominence of lateralization in the lesion, split-brain and task-based fMRI literature, surprisingly little asymmetry has been revealed in the increasingly popular functional imaging studies of spontaneous fluctuations in the fMRI BOLD signal (so-called resting-state fMRI). Here, we show the global signal, an often discarded component of the BOLD signal in resting-state studies, reveals a leftward asymmetry that maps onto regions preferential for semantic processing in left frontal and temporal cortex and the right cerebellum and a rightward asymmetry that maps onto putative attention-related regions in right frontal, temporoparietal, and parietal cortex.

Diffusion tensor imaging in children with unilateral hearing loss: a pilot study.

Objective: Language acquisition was assumed to proceed normally in children with unilateral hearing loss (UHL) since they have one functioning ear. However, children with UHL score poorly on speech-language tests and have higher rates of educational problems compared to normal hearing (NH) peers. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is an imaging modality used to measure microstructural integrity of brain white matter.

Allodynia and descending pain modulation in migraine: a resting state functional connectivity analysis.

Objective: Most migraineurs develop cutaneous allodynia during migraines, and many have cutaneous sensitization between attacks. Atypical pain modulation via the descending pain system may contribute to this sensitization and allodynia. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that compared with non-allodynic migraineurs, allodynic migraineurs have atypical periaqueductal gray (PAG) and nucleus cuneiformis (NCF) resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) with other pain processing regions.

Atypical resting-state functional connectivity of affective pain regions in chronic migraine.

Objective: Chronic migraineurs (CM) have painful intolerances to somatosensory, visual, olfactory, and auditory stimuli during and between migraine attacks. These intolerances are suggestive of atypical affective responses to potentially noxious stimuli. We hypothesized that atypical resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) of affective pain-processing brain regions may associate with these intolerances.

Modulation of the brain's functional network architecture in the transition from wake to sleep.

The transition from quiet wakeful rest to sleep represents a period over which attention to the external environment fades. Neuroimaging methodologies have provided much information on the shift in neural activity patterns in sleep, but the dynamic restructuring of human brain networks in the transitional period from wake to sleep remains poorly understood. Analysis of electrophysiological measures and functional network connectivity of these early transitional states shows subtle shifts in network architecture that are consistent with reduced external attentiveness and increased internal and self-referential processing.

Parcellation in left lateral parietal cortex is similar in adults and children.

A key question in developmental neuroscience involves understanding how and when the cerebral cortex is partitioned into distinct functional areas. The present study used functional connectivity MRI mapping and graph theory to identify putative cortical areas and generate a parcellation scheme of left lateral parietal cortex (LLPC) in 7 to 10-year-old children and adults. Results indicated that a majority of putative LLPC areas could be matched across groups (mean distance between matched areas across age: 3.

Prediction of individual brain maturity using fMRI.

Group functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging (fcMRI) studies have documented reliable changes in human functional brain maturity over development. Here we show that support vector machine-based multivariate pattern analysis extracts sufficient information from fcMRI data to make accurate predictions about individuals' brain maturity across development. The use of only 5 minutes of resting-state fcMRI data from 238 scans of typically developing volunteers (ages 7 to 30 years) allowed prediction of individual brain maturity as a functional connectivity maturation index.

The functional organization of trial-related activity in lexical processing after early left hemispheric brain lesions: An event-related fMRI study.

Children with congenital left hemisphere damage due to perinatal stroke are capable of acquiring relatively normal language functions despite experiencing a cortical insult that in adults often leads to devastating lifetime disabilities. Although this observed phenomenon is accepted, its neurobiological mechanisms are not well characterized. In this paper we examined the functional neuroanatomy of lexical processing in 13 children/adolescents with perinatal left hemispheric damage.

The default mode network and self-referential processes in depression.

The recently discovered default mode network (DMN) is a group of areas in the human brain characterized, collectively, by functions of a self-referential nature. In normal individuals, activity in the DMN is reduced during nonself-referential goal-directed tasks, in keeping with the folk-psychological notion of losing one's self in one's work. Imaging and anatomical studies in major depression have found alterations in both the structure and function in some regions that belong to the DMN, thus, suggesting a basis for the disordered self-referential thought of depression.

Functional neuroanatomy of lexical processing in children with cleft lip and palate.

Background: Patients with palatal clefts are predisposed to developing speech and language abnormalities. Emerging evidence indicates that children with cleft lip and/or cleft palate have higher rates of learning disabilities than the general population and differences in brain morphology.

Methods: Magnetic resonance imaging of 12 individuals with isolated unilateral complete clefts of the lip and palate produced functional images during three lexical processing tasks: generation of verbs, opposites, and rhymes.

A developmental fMRI study of reading and repetition reveals changes in phonological and visual mechanisms over age.

In this study of reading development, children (ages 7-10) and adults (ages 18-32) performed overt single-word reading and aural repetition tasks on high-frequency word stimuli during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Most regions showed similar activity across age groups. These widespread regions of similarity indicate that children and adults use largely overlapping mechanisms when processing high-frequency words.

Developmental changes in human cerebral functional organization for word generation.

A fundamental issue in cognitive neuroscience is the nature of developmental changes in human cerebral functional organization for higher cognitive functions. Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure developmental changes in the functional neuroanatomy subserving controlled lexical association. First, brain regions showing significant differences in activity between school-age children and young adults, despite equivalent task performance, were identified.