Resting State fMRI Speech, Language, and Executive Function Network Connectivity in Children with and without Listening Difficulties

Listening Difficulties (LiD) are characterized by a child having reported issues with listening despite exhibiting normal hearing thresholds. LiD can often overlap with other developmental disorders, including speech and language disorders, and involve similar higher-order auditory processing. This study used resting-state functional MRI to examine functional brain networks associated with receptive and expressive speech and language and executive function in children with LiD and typically developing (TD) peers (average age of 10 years). We examined differences in region-of-interest (ROI)-to-ROI functional connectivity between: (1) the LiD group and the TD group and (2) within the LiD group, those participants who had seen a Speech-Language Pathologist and those who had not. The latter comparison was examined as a way of comparing children with and without speech and language disorders. Connections that differed between groups were analyzed for correlations with behavioral test data. The results showed functional connectivity differences between the LiD group and TD group in the executive function network and trends in the speech perception network. Differences were also found in the executive network between those LiD participants who had seen an SLP and those who had not. Several of these connectivity differences, particularly frontal-striatal connections, correlated with performance on behavioral tests: including tests that measure attention, executive function, and episodic memory, as well as speech, vocabulary, and sentence structure. The results of this study suggest that differences in functional connectivity in brain networks associated with speech perception and executive function may underlie and contribute to listening difficulties.