Poster E84, Thursday, August 22, 2019, 3:45 – 5:30 pm, Restaurant Hall
Evidence for a critical role of the left inferior parietal lobule and superior longitudinal fasciculus in proficient text reading
Sylvie Moritz-Gasser1,2,3, Sébastien Boissonneau4, Guillaume Herbet1,2,3, Anne-Laure Lemaître1,5, Hugues Duffau1,3;1CHU Montpellier, Department of Neurosurgery, 2Montpellier University, Department of Speech-Language Therapy, 3Institute of Neuroscience of Montpellier, 4APHM, CHU Timone, Department of Neurosurgery, Marseille, 5PSITEC – University of Lille
Reading proficiency is an important skill for personal and socio-professional daily life. Current neurocognitive models underline a dual route organization of word reading in which information is processed by both a dorsal phonological “assembled phonology route” and a ventral lexical-semantic “addressed phonology route”. Because proficient reading should not be reduced to the ability to read words one after another, the current study was designed to shed light on the neural bases underpinning specifically text reading, and on the relative contribution of each route in this skill. Twenty-two patients harboring a left diffuse low-grade glioma operated on in awake condition were included in the study. They were divided into three groups according to tumor location: Inferior Parietal Lobule (IPL Group, n=6), Inferior Temporal Gyrus (Tinf Group, n=6), Fronto-Insular (CTRL Group, n=10). Spoken language and reading testing was performed in all patients the day before, during the surgery, and 3 months after, as well as cognitive functioning before and 3 months after. Text reading scores obtained before and three months after the surgery were compared within each group and between groups, and correlations between reading scores and both spoken language and neuropsychological scores were calculated. Results indicated that only the IPL Group showed a significant decrease in text reading scores between the two periods, which was not associated with lower scores neither in naming nor in verbal fluency, while Tinf Group showed a slight decrease in text reading between the two periods, associated with a clear decrease in naming and semantic verbal fluency, CTRL Group showing no differences between preoperative and postoperative reading and spoken language scores. The analysis of these behavioral results and anatomical data (i.e. resection cavities and white matter damage) suggests a critical role for the left inferior parietal lobule and superior longitudinal fasciculus in proficient text reading. This ability might then depend not only on the integrity of both processing routes, but also on their capacity of interaction. These findings may thus have fundamental as well as clinical implications.
Themes: Reading, Disorders: Acquired
Method: Behavioral