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The Georgetown Reading in Aging Neuroimaging Dataset (GRAND): Reading and multimodal MRI data in older adults
Poster Session A, Wednesday, September 30, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
Elizabeth J. Anderson1, Ryan Staples1, Sara M. Dyslin1, Elizabeth H.T. Chang1, Alycia B. Laks1,2, J. Vivian Dickens1,3, Devna Mathur1, Sachi Paul1,4, Elizabeth Dvorak1, Peter E. Turkeltaub1,2; 1Georgetown University Medical Center, 2MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital, 3Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, 4University of Pittsburgh
Reading is a critical skill in modern society. Most research on reading is conducted in school-age children or young adults. However, acquired brain disorders often affect reading ability, and these disorders tend to occur in older adults. It is therefore critical to examine the normative distribution of reading behavior and the brain basis of reading in older adults. This normative dataset was developed to support investigations of reading and language impairment after stroke, while also enabling broader research into language, cognition, and brain aging. Here, we provide trial-level, item-level, and participant-level single word reading and lexical decision data, as well as structural, functional, and diffusion-weighted MRI data on a cohort of neurologically healthy older adults. 116 neurotypical adults (110 with scanning data) completed four tasks as part of larger batteries for one of two study protocols. Tasks included real word oral reading, pseudoword oral reading, lexical decision, and an in-scanner semantic decision task contrasting semantic relatedness judgments with pseudofont control trials. Participants ranged in age from 22 to 84 years (mean: 59.52, sd: 12.74; mean education: 16.99 years, sd: 2.31), had no major neurological or psychiatric disorders, learned English before the age of eight, and were screened for cognitive impairment using the age-, ethnicity-, and race-adjusted Montreal Cognitive Assessment criteria. Behavioral measures include accuracy, response times, and detailed oral reading error coding for corpora that are parametrically modulated in frequency, imageability, and regularity for real words and consistency of spelling-sound mapping for pseudowords. Neuroimaging data include high-resolution T1-weighted and FLAIR structural MRI, multi-shell high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI), and task-based functional MRI collected during an adaptive written semantic decision paradigm designed to robustly engage language networks across a range of ability levels. Along with raw MRI data, processed imaging outputs include participant-level activation maps for semantic relative to pseudofont conditions and whole-brain structural connectivity matrices derived from probabilistic tractography. Behavioral reliability was assessed using split-half resampling procedures across 1,000 iterations with Spearman-Brown correction. Reliability estimates were high across tasks, with response time reliability ranging from .97 – .99 and accuracy reliability ranging from .92 – .97. Quality control analyses further demonstrated robust temporal signal-to-noise rations in frontal, temporal, and parietal language regions. The behavioral data revealed expected effects of frequency, regularity, imageability, and pseudoword type on performance, supporting the validity of the behavioral data. Group-level activation for the Semantic > Pseudofont contrast strongly overlapped with language regions identified in automated meta-analytic maps derived from NeuroSynth, supporting the validity of the semantic decision paradigm for engaging core language networks in the context of reading. These data provide a much-needed normative reference for reading behavior in older adults and a valuable resource for identifying novel brain-behavioral relationships underlying reading. The integration of detailed behavioral measures with multimodal neuroimaging enables investigations spanning cognitive neuropsychology, typical aging, and alexia research. The resource will be freely available through the Open Science Framework and is intended to support reproducible research on the cognitive and neural bases of reading and language in aging populations.
Topic Areas: Reading, Development of Resources, Software, Educational Materials, etc.