Differences in Brain Function and Changes with Intervention in Children with Poor Spelling and Reading Abilities

Previous fMRI studies in English-speaking samples suggested that specific interventions may alter brain function in language-relevant networks in children with reading and spelling difficulties, but this research strongly focused on reading impaired individuals. Only few studies so far investigated characteristics of brain activation associated with poor spelling ability and whether a specific spelling intervention may also be associated with distinct changes in brain activity patterns. We here investigated such effects of a morpheme-based spelling intervention on brain function in 20 children with comparatively poor spelling and reading abilities using repeated fMRI. Relative to 10 matched controls, children with comparatively poor spelling and reading abilities showed increased activation in frontal medial and right hemispheric regions and decreased activation in left occipito-temporal regions prior to the intervention, during processing of a lexical decision task. After five weeks of intervention, spelling and reading comprehension significantly improved in the training group, along with increased activation in the left temporal, parahippocampal and hippocampal regions. Conversely, the waiting group showed increases in right posterior regions. Our findings could indicate an increased left temporal activation associated with the recollection of the new learnt morpheme-based strategy related to successful training

Boron isotope fractionation during the formation of amorphous calcium carbonates and their transformation to Mg-calcite and aragonite

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Glass transition temperatures and crystallization kinetics of a synthetic, anhydrous, amorphous calcium-magnesium carbonate

We report the first calorimetric observations of glass transition temperatures and crystallization rates of anhydrous, amorphous calcium-magnesium carbonate using fast scanning differential scanning calorimetry. Hydrous amorphous Ca0.95Mg0.05CO3 · 0.5H2O (ACMC) solid was precipitated from a MgCl2-NaHCO3 buffered solution, separated from the supernatant, and freeze-dried. An aliquot of the freeze-dried samples was additionally dried at 250°C for up to 6 h in a furnace and in a high-purity N2 atmosphere to produce anhydrous ACMC. The glass transition temperature of the anhydrous Ca0.95Mg0.05CO3 was determined by applying different heating rates (1000-6000 K s-1) and correcting for thermal lag to be 376°C and the relaxational heat capacity was determined to be Cp = 0.16 J/(g K). Additionally, the heating rate dependence of the temperature that is associated with the corrected crystallization peaks is used to determine the activation energy of crystallization to be 275 kJ mol-1. A high-resolution transmission electron microscopy study on the hydrous and anhydrous samples provided further constraints on their compositional and structural states. This article is part of the theme issue 'Exploring the length scales, timescales and chemistry of challenging materials (Part 1)'.ISSN:1364-503XISSN:1471-296

Differences in integrity of white matter and changes with training in spelling impaired children: a diffusion tensor imaging study

While the functional correlates of spelling impairment have been rarely investigated, to our knowledge no study exists regarding the structural characteristics of spelling impairment and potential changes with interventions. Using diffusion tensor imaging at 3.0 T, we here therefore sought to investigate (a) differences between children with poor spelling abilities (training group and waiting group) and controls, and (b) the effects of a morpheme-based spelling intervention in children with poor spelling abilities on DTI parameters. A baseline comparison of white matter indices revealed significant differences between controls and spelling-impaired children, mainly located in the right hemisphere (superior corona radiata (SCR), posterior limb of internal capsule, superior longitudinal fasciculus). After 5 weeks of training, spelling ability improved in the training group, along with increases in fractional anisotropy and decreases of radial diffusivity in the right hemisphere compared to controls. In addition, significantly higher decreases of mean diffusivity in the right SCR for the spelling-impaired training group compared to the waiting group were observed. Our results suggest that spelling impairment is associated with differences in white-matter integrity in the right hemisphere. We also provide first indications that white matter changes occur during successful training, but this needs to be more specifically addressed in future research.