ArticleNeuroImage2021
Neurobiological underpinnings of rapid white matter plasticity during intensive reading instruction.
Article in NeuroImage, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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.
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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
16 citing papers in PubMed, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- Assessing white matter plasticity in a randomized controlled trial of early literacy training in preschoolers.PloS one · 2025Trial
- Short-Term Developmental Trajectories of Dorsal-Ventral Pathways and Their Relationships with First-Grade Learning.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Motor learning induces myelin-related white matter changes revealed by MRI-based in vivo histology.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Considerations for conducting developmental neuroimaging research on mental health topics.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Review
- Longitudinal trajectories of brain development from infancy to school age and their relationship with literacy development.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Longitudinal trajectories of brain development from infancy to school age and their relationship to literacy development.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- An Eccentricity Gradient Reversal across High-Level Visual Cortex.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Fast and reliable quantitative measures of white matter development with magnetic resonance fingerprinting.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Impact of COVID-19 School Closures on White Matter Plasticity in the Reading Network.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Differences in educational opportunity predict white matter development.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2024Article
- Investigating Dyslexia through Diffusion Tensor Imaging across Ages: A Systematic Review.Brain sciences · 2024Review
- White matter and literacy: A dynamic system in flux.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2024Article
- A unified model for cross-modal plasticity and skill acquisition.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2024Review
- White matter microstructural plasticity associated with educational intervention in reading disability.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
- Fiber-specific structural properties relate to reading skills in children and adolescents.eLife · 2022Article
- White matter properties underlying reading abilities differ in 8-year-old children born full term and preterm: A multi-modal approach.NeuroImage · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Diffusion MRI is a powerful tool for imaging brain structure, but it is challenging to discern the biological underpinnings of plasticity inferred from these and other non-invasive MR measurements. Biophysical modeling of the diffusion signal aims to render a more biologically rich image of tissue microstructure, but the application of these models comes with important caveats. A separate approach for gaining biological specificity has been to seek converging evidence from multi-modal datasets. Here we use metrics derived from diffusion kurtosis imaging (DKI) and the white matter tract integrity (WMTI) model along with quantitative MRI measurements of T1 relaxation to characterize changes throughout the white matter during an 8-week, intensive reading intervention (160 total hours of instruction). Behavioral measures, multi-shell diffusion MRI data, and quantitative T1 data were collected at regular intervals during the intervention in a group of 33 children with reading difficulties (7-12 years old), and over the same period in an age-matched non-intervention control group. Throughout the white matter, mean 'extra-axonal' diffusivity was inversely related to intervention time. In contrast, model estimated axonal water fraction (AWF), overall diffusion kurtosis, and T1 relaxation time showed no significant change over the intervention period. Both diffusion and quantitative T1 based metrics were correlated with pre-intervention reading performance, albeit with distinct anatomical distributions. These results are consistent with the view that rapid changes in diffusion properties reflect phenomena other than widespread changes in myelin density. We discuss this result in light of recent work highlighting non-axonal factors in experience-dependent plasticity and learning.
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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.