Abstract #3287

Schmithorst V, Holland S, Karunanayaka P, Solodkin A, Plante E

To investigate age-related changes in brain connectivity associated with language development in children, we performed a large scale fMRI study (313 children) of narrative story comprehension. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was combined with the results of a group independent component analysis (ICA) of fMRI data to examine the associated age related changes in brain connectivity. We found age-related changes in brain connectivity corroborating recent hypotheses regarding the functional segregation in Brocas and Wernickes areas, the right hemispheric dominance in narrative comprehension and the age dependent increase in left hemispheric dominance for language processing.