Effect of Illiteracy on Cognition and Cerebral Morphology in Later Life

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Background and Purpose A better developmental environment has positive effects on brain development. The acquisition of literacyduring childhood may affect brain functional organization. The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of illiteracy on neuropsychologicaltest results and cerebral morphology in later life.
Methods We recruited 7 illiterate elderly farmers who had never attended school and had no reading or writing knowledge. These subjectswere compared with 9 literate subjects in terms of neuropsychological performance and brain volume. All subjects were over 65-years-oldand had the same regional and occupational background.
Results Neuropsychological tests indicated that the performance of the illiterate subjects was worse than that of literate subjects in all cognitivedomains except forward digit span, tool-use and tool-free gestures, verbal word recognition, and verbal generation of animals and groceryitems. The illiterate group also showed significantly decreased cortical volume and surface area in both parietal lobes. However, the illiterategroup showed increased cortical thickness in the left cuneus.
Conclusions Literacy acquired in childhood may increase the volume of the parietal lobe and improve neuropsychological performancethrough the process of brain plasticity. The effects can be lifelong.

참고문헌 (Reference)

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