fMRI brain response during sentence reading comprehension in children with benign epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes

Introduction: Children with benign epilepsy with centro-temporal spikes (BECTS) often have language problems. Abnormal epileptic activity is found in central and temporal brain regions, which are involved in reading and semantic and syntactic comprehension. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined reading networks in BED'S children with a new sentence reading comprehension task involving semantic and syntactic processing. Method: Fifteen children with BECTS (age = 11y 1m +/- 16 m; 12 boys) and 18 healthy controls (age = 11 y 8m +/- 20 m; 11 boys) performed an fMRI reading comprehension task in which they read a pair of syntactically complex sentences and decided whether the target sentence (the second sentence in the pair) was true or false with respect to the first sentence. All children also underwent an exhaustive neuropsychological assessment. Results: We demonstrated weaknesses in several cognitive domains in BED'S children. During the sentence reading fMRI task, left inferior frontal regions and bilateral temporal areas were activated in BED'S children and healthy controls. However, additional brain regions such as the left hippocampus and precuneus were activated in mos children. Moreover, specific activation was found in the left caudate and putamen in BED'S children but not in healthy controls. Cognitive results and accuracy during the fMRI task were associated with specific brain activation patterns. Conclusion: BED'S children recruited a wider network to perform the fMRI sentence reading comprehension task, with specific activation in the left dorsal striatum. BED'S cognitive performance differently predicted functional activation in frontal and temporal regions compared to controls, suggesting differences in brain network organisation that contribute to reading comprehension. Crown Copyright (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.