'Reading Circuit' in Brain by Age 7

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The networks the brain relies on to read may be in place earlier than expected in children, new study findings suggest.

Using a scan called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in children ages 5 to 7, researchers found that reading-related brain networks were in place by age 7.

In an interview with Reuters Health, the lead investigator, Dr. William D. Gaillard, explained that the left side of the brain is the dominant one for language skills in 95% of people. Gaillard and his colleagues expected that this predominance of the left brain for reading tasks would already be apparent in children ages 5 to 7.

The study, which included 16 healthy children, bore out those expectations. Even though the researchers thought that reading-related brain activity would be focused on the left side of the brain in these young readers, they expected that younger children would show more reading activity on both sides of the brain than a previously studied group of older kids.

That did not turn out to be the case, the researchers report in the January 14th issue of the journal Neurology. In most children, the same reading-related brain network found in adults was in place by age 7, according to the report. In some cases, these networks were comparable by age 5 to those seen in adults.

Despite the similarity between children and adults in the development of the reading parts of the brain, Gaillard said he expects that children may have more variability in how they read. Youngsters may have two or three strategies that they use to learn how to read, he suggested. As children age, they may lose some of this variability, according to Gaillard.

The next step, Gaillard said, is "to look more closely at larger populations of children who are learning how to read." The aim of these studies, he said, would be to trace what sort of development is needed for children to learn to read.

SOURCE: Neurology 2003;60:94-100.

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