SynthesisHuman brain mapping2015
Reading in the brain of children and adults: a meta-analysis of 40 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies.
Synthesis in Human brain mapping, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 168 papers, 12 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
168 citing papers in PubMed, 12 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Culture Shapes the Neural Functional Alteration and Its Development in Children With Dyslexia: A Cross-Linguistic Meta-Analysis.Developmental science · 2026Pooled it
- Event-related potentials in the "Triangle" framework of reading and developmental dyslexia: a systematic review.Annals of dyslexia · 2026Pooled it
- Neurodevelopmental commonalities in cognitive control networks for mathematics and reading in meta-analysis of 3308 participants.Nature communications · 2025Pooled it
- Brain-wide decoding of numbers and letters: Converging evidence from multivariate fMRI analysis and probabilistic meta-analysis.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2025Pooled it
- The Impact of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation on Reading Processes: A Systematic Review.Neuropsychology review · 2023Pooled it
- Is human face recognition lateralized to the right hemisphere due to neural competition with left-lateralized visual word recognition? A critical review.Brain structure & function · 2022Pooled it
- Reading intervention and neuroplasticity: A systematic review and meta-analysis of brain changes associated with reading intervention.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Pooled it
- Orthographic depth and developmental dyslexia: a meta-analytic study.Annals of dyslexia · 2021Pooled it
- Neural networks for sentence comprehension and production: An ALE-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies.Human brain mapping · 2019Pooled it
- Where arithmetic and phonology meet: The meta-analytic convergence of arithmetic and phonological processing in the brain.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2018Pooled it
- A meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of eye movements and visual word reading.Brain and behavior · 2017Pooled it
- Dyslexic brain activation abnormalities in deep and shallow orthographies: A meta-analysis of 28 functional neuroimaging studies.Human brain mapping · 2016Pooled it
- Improving Peripheral Reading With Noninvasive Transcranial Electrical Stimulation of Early Visual Areas.Translational vision science & technology · 2025Trial
- Uncovering Latent Cognitive, Metacognitive, and Neural Bases of Problem-Solving Deficits in Children with Developmental Dyscalculia.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Impact of shared storybook reading on child development: The Japan Environment and Children's Study.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- Neural Assimilation and Accommodation in Trilinguals: An fMRI Study at 7 T.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Experience-dependent cortical plasticity in response to formal schooling: Effects on networks for reading and mathematics.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Phrase-level emotional salience modulates neural substrates of situation model building in developing readers.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- The interplay between executive function and learning disabilities: Developmental cognitive neuroscience perspectives on reading, math, and ADHD.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- Modeling differences in neurodevelopmental maturity of the reading network using support vector regression on functional connectivity data.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
108 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We used quantitative, coordinate-based meta-analysis to objectively synthesize age-related commonalities and differences in brain activation patterns reported in 40 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of reading in children and adults. Twenty fMRI studies with adults (age means: 23-34 years) were matched to 20 studies with children (age means: 7-12 years). The separate meta-analyses of these two sets showed a pattern of reading-related brain activation common to children and adults in left ventral occipito-temporal (OT), inferior frontal, and posterior parietal regions. The direct statistical comparison between the two meta-analytic maps of children and adults revealed higher convergence in studies with children in left superior temporal and bilateral supplementary motor regions. In contrast, higher convergence in studies with adults was identified in bilateral posterior OT/cerebellar and left dorsal precentral regions. The results are discussed in relation to current neuroanatomical models of reading and tentative functional interpretations of reading-related activation clusters in children and adults are provided.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.