Associations between the size of the amygdala in infancy and language abilities during the preschool years in normally developing children

TY - JOUR

T1 - Associations between the size of the amygdala in infancy and language abilities during the preschool years in normally developing children

AU - Ortiz-Mantilla, Silvia

AU - Choe, Myong sun

AU - Flax, Judy

AU - Grant, P. Ellen

AU - Benasich, April A.

N1 - Funding Information: This research was supported by the Santa Fe Institute Consortium. Additional funding came from the William Randolph Hearst Fund of Harvard University, an NSF grant to A. A. B. (#SBE- 0542013 to the “Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center”), and from the Elizabeth H. Solomon Center for Neurodevelopmental Research. Special thanks go to the children who participated in this study and to their families who brought their children to the lab for countless successive visits. We would also like to thank the many colleagues and lab members who contributed to the success of this research. In particular, we want to acknowledge Drs. Wen-Ching Liu, Nino Badridze, and Sarah Paterson along with Ms. Susan Marken and Ms. Julie Morgan Byrne for their assistance in data collection as well as in the development of the naturally sleeping MRI paradigm and infant sound attenuation system.

PY - 2010/2/1

Y1 - 2010/2/1

N2 - Recently, structural MRI studies in children have been used to examine relations between brain volume and behavioral measures. However, most of these studies have been done in children older than 2 years of age. Obtaining volumetric measures in infants is considerably more difficult, as structures are less well defined and largely unmyelinated, making segmentation challenging. Moreover, it is still unclear whether individual anatomic variation across development, in healthy, normally developing infants, is reflected in the configuration and function of the mature brain and, as importantly, whether variation in infant brain structure might be related to later cognitive and linguistic abilities. In this longitudinal study, using T1 structural MRI, we identified links between amygdala volume in normally developing, naturally sleeping, 6-month infants and their subsequent language abilities at 2, 3 and 4 years. The images were processed and manually segmented using Cardviews to extract volumetric measures. Intra-rater reliability for repeated segmentation was 87.73% of common voxel agreement. Standardized language assessments were administered at 6 and 12 months and at 2, 3 and 4 years. Significant and consistent correlations were found between amygdala size and language abilities. Children with larger right amygdalae at 6 months had lower scores on expressive and receptive language measures at 2, 3, and 4 years. Associations between amygdala size and language outcomes have been reported in children with autism. The findings presented here extend this association to normally developing children, supporting the idea that the amygdalae might play an important but as yet unspecified role in mediating language acquisition.

AB - Recently, structural MRI studies in children have been used to examine relations between brain volume and behavioral measures. However, most of these studies have been done in children older than 2 years of age. Obtaining volumetric measures in infants is considerably more difficult, as structures are less well defined and largely unmyelinated, making segmentation challenging. Moreover, it is still unclear whether individual anatomic variation across development, in healthy, normally developing infants, is reflected in the configuration and function of the mature brain and, as importantly, whether variation in infant brain structure might be related to later cognitive and linguistic abilities. In this longitudinal study, using T1 structural MRI, we identified links between amygdala volume in normally developing, naturally sleeping, 6-month infants and their subsequent language abilities at 2, 3 and 4 years. The images were processed and manually segmented using Cardviews to extract volumetric measures. Intra-rater reliability for repeated segmentation was 87.73% of common voxel agreement. Standardized language assessments were administered at 6 and 12 months and at 2, 3 and 4 years. Significant and consistent correlations were found between amygdala size and language abilities. Children with larger right amygdalae at 6 months had lower scores on expressive and receptive language measures at 2, 3, and 4 years. Associations between amygdala size and language outcomes have been reported in children with autism. The findings presented here extend this association to normally developing children, supporting the idea that the amygdalae might play an important but as yet unspecified role in mediating language acquisition.

KW - Amygdala

KW - Emotion

KW - Infant

KW - Language development

KW - Naturally sleeping MRI

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U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.10.029

DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.10.029

M3 - Article

C2 - 19850137

SN - 1053-8119

VL - 49

SP - 2791

EP - 2799

JO - Neuroimage

JF - Neuroimage

IS - 3

ER -