Brain scans at an early age can predict whether a child will be a good reader in the future, according to a team of Stanford researchers.
Lead author of the study Jason D. Yeatman and colleagues included 39 children to examine how brain scans can identify children at higher risks of poor reading skills, for enabling an early and proper intervention.
All the participants were subjected to brain scans once a year, for three years. The rate of development in brain was measured by fractional anisotropy (FA).
Apart from that, researchers measured the children's cognitive, language and reading skills through standardized tests.
In all the tests, the neural structures or the white matter region of the brain related to reading showed or predicted the test scores.
Researchers found children with above-average reading skills exhibiting FA value in two brain regions-the left hemisphere arcuate fasciculus and the left hemisphere inferior longitudinal fasciculus.
For them, the FA value was found initially low, but increased later. However, for children with lower reading skills, the FA value was initially high but declined later.
The findings are expected to identify children's reading problems at an early stage and provide proper guidance and help.
"By the time kids reach elementary school, we're not great at finding ways of helping them catch up," Yeatman, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Stanford, said in a news release. "Once we have an accurate model relating the maturation of the brain's reading circuitry to children's acquisition of reading skills, and once we understand which factors are beneficial, I really think it will be possible to develop early intervention protocols for children who are poor readers, and tailor individualized lesson plans to emphasize good development. Over the next five to 10 years, that's what we're really hoping to do."
Results of the study have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
