Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
IEEE ACCESS, cilt.13, ss.197160-197177, 2025 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
Dyslexia is characterized by unexpected weaknesses in reading or writing skills during childhood. The aim of this study is to identify differences in brain topological structures by comparing the effects of special education on dyslexic children with no previous educational history and healthy children. For this purpose, after preprocessing fMRI data from resting state and continuous reading tasks of children diagnosed with dyslexia for the first-time (Dys, n=25), children with dyslexia who received special education (EDys, n=24), and healthy controls (HC, n=25) in FSL software, global and nodal metrics were calculated using graph analysis in GRETNA. The AUC values of global efficiency (Eg), small-world (characteristic path length (Lp), Gamma (y), Lambda (lambda), Sigma (sigma)), betweenness centrality (BC), degree centrality (DC), and nodal efficiency (NE) metrics were statistically compared within the group using ANOVA, and significant differences were found. In global metrics, resting state values of Eg (p=0.018, p=0.023), sigma (p=0.012, p=0.048), and gamma (p=0.012) were higher in Dys and EDys compared to HC. Conversely, Lp (p=0.005, p=0.007) and lambda (p=0.049, p=0.018) values were found to be higher in HC than in Dys and EDys. As per nodal metrics, during resting state, Dys showed higher values in the right olfactory cortex (p=0.001) compared to HC. However, in the reading task analysis results, Dys and EDys exhibited higher values than HC in the cerebellum (p=0.035, p=0.019) and vermis (p=0.045, p=0.031) regions. It was further assessed that children with dyslexia have different global and nodal brain network topologies compared to HC group, which was true for both resting state and reading task. The differences observed in the EDys group help us understand the effects of education on dyslexia and may be valuable in determining targeted areas for intervention and adopting appropriate treatment approaches.