Biology subjects

Horowitz-Kraus, T.

Publications and source records attributed to Horowitz-Kraus, T..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Multisensory integration while learning to read: A longitudinal functional and structural MRI study

Literacy development involves the recognition and integration of auditory and visual signals and as such offers a unique opportunity to track the development of an eventually efficient multisensory processing network. To shed light on this topic we conducted a 12-month longitudinal 3 Tesla functional and structural MRI study in children beginning to receive formal literacy instruction. Twenty-three six-year-old German-speaking participants completed four fMRI sessions during which they were presented with letters, speech sounds, or their audiovisual combinations in congruent and incongruent formats. Longitudinal changes in BOLD response amplitude were assessed using linear mixed-effects models. Over the course of learning to read, we observed significant changes in modulations of BOLD activity for the congruent - incongruent contrast within a left-lateralised network encompassing the central opercular cortex, anterior supramarginal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus (pars triangularis) and frontal pole. These effects were primarily driven by a gradual increase of response amplitude across sessions, consistent with the refinement of audiovisual integration mechanisms. Structural analyses revealed longitudinal anatomical variation within temporal, occipital, and sensorimotor regions, predominantly involving the right middle and inferior temporal gyri and bilateral temporal regions. However, changes in regional anatomy and functional activation were not significantly associated with behavioural measures of grapheme-phoneme association. Together, these findings demonstrate reorganisation within established regions known to be related to language processing and multisensory integration during early literacy development, highlighting the utility of longitudinal MRI for tracking experience-dependent neuroplastic changes in brain function and structure.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Development of Audiovisual Integration in Beginning Readers: A Longitudinal fMRI Study

Acquiring reading proficiency, unlike spoken language, requires the brain to engage several specialized neural systems to map visual symbols (letters) to their corresponding phonological sounds (audiovisual integration), laying the foundation for fluent reading. This study investigates the neural and behavioral trajectory of developing audiovisual (AV) integration during the first year of learning to read. Thirty-two healthy Hebrew-speaking first-grade children were assessed at 3 time points across the school year: beginning, middle, and end of first grade. Participants underwent behavioral testing and brain fMRI scans while performing a block-design fMRI task involving AV matching or non-matching letters and sounds. Together with improvement in behavioral test scores related to general abilities, working memory, cognitive flexibility, and phonemic abilities, a Drift Diffusion Modeling (DDM) analysis of the accuracy and reaction time across sessions suggested faster and more efficient responses as the year progressed. fMRI results showed a significant increase in activation, from the beginning to the end of the first grade, in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG), frontal cortices and parietotemporal cortices, with a shift towards left-lateralization in the fusiform gyrus at the end of the year. These findings point towards the second half of the first grade as the time window for neural specialization and lateralization to phonological and orthographic information. A significant positive correlation between the fusiform gyrus activation and naming objects and colors scores across all sessions links this neural specialization to cognitive flexibility behavioral skills. Key pointsO_LISignificant increase, predominantly between the middle and end of the first grade, in activation in fusiform, left superior temporal, frontal, and parietotemporal cortices across the first grade. C_LIO_LISignificant left lateralization in the fusiform gyrus at the end of first grade. C_LIO_LIPositive correlation between naming skills and a bilateral fusiform gyrus activation throughout the first grade. C_LI

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2025

Lower engagement of cognitive control, attention, modulation networks and lower creativity in children while using ChatGPT: an fMRI study

Generative AI can scaffold idea generation, but how it engages control, attention, and memory systems in the developing versus mature brain, and how this relates to creativity, remains unclear. We compared 6-7-year-old (N = 15) children and adults (N = 16) during a naturalistic 5-minute co-creative dialogue with ChatGPT using the same prompt, in-scanner conversation, undergoing functional MRI scanning and their dialogues were recorded. Functional connectivity (Fishers z) was computed within and between seven large-scale networks: cingulo-opercular, default mode (DMN), memory retrieval, frontoparietal (FP), salience, ventral attention (VAN), and dorsal attention (DAN). Creativity scores, assessed outside of the scanner, did not differ between groups. Adults showed stronger within-network connectivity in control/attention systems, most robustly in FP, with additional effects in salience and DAN. Adults also exhibited greater cross-network integration, particularly FP-salience and FP-DAN couplings, alongside broader adult-greater effects among memory- and attention-related pairs. During a co-creative AI-assisted conversation, children exhibit a less coherent and integrated control-attention-memory architecture than adults. The combination of similar creativity scores with divergent neural profiles suggests that developmental differences in the implementation of creative cognition may be more pronounced than baseline capacity. Our findings highlight FP-centric pathways and their salience-gated interactions as candidate substrates by which creativity supports goal-directed co-creative dialogue with AI. HighlightsO_LIChildren demonstrate a lower within-network connectivity in the frontoparietal, salience, and dorsal attention systems while using ChatGPT compared to adults. C_LIO_LIReduced between-network integration in cognitive control and modulation networks (frontoparietal-salience and frontoparietal-dorsal) in children vs adults while using ChatGPT. C_LIO_LIIn adults, but not in children, higher creativity was associated with stronger connectivity within cognitive control networks. C_LI

neuroscience↗