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The neuroanatomy of developmental language disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Nature Human Behaviour (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Developmental language disorder (DLD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder with adverse impacts that continue into adulthood. However, its neural bases remain unclear. Here we address this gap by systematically identifying and quantitatively synthesizing neuroanatomical studies of DLD using co-localization likelihood estimation, a recently developed neuroanatomical meta-analytic technique. Analyses of structural brain data (22 peer-reviewed papers, 577 participants) revealed highly consistent anomalies only in the basal ganglia (100% of participant groups in which this structure was examined, weighted by group sample sizes; 99.8% permutation-based likelihood the anomaly clustering was not due to chance). These anomalies were localized specifically to the anterior neostriatum (again 100% weighted proportion and 99.8% likelihood). As expected given the task dependence of activation, functional neuroimaging data (11 peer-reviewed papers, 414 participants) yielded less consistency, though anomalies again occurred primarily in the basal ganglia (79.0% and 95.1%). Multiple sensitivity analyses indicated that the patterns were robust. The meta-analyses elucidate the neuroanatomical signature of DLD, and implicate the basal ganglia in particular. The findings support the procedural circuit deficit hypothesis of DLD, have basic research and translational implications for the disorder, and advance our understanding of the neuroanatomy of language.

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Fig. 1: PRISMA flowchart showing the process of identifying the 42 papers included in the meta-analyses.
Fig. 2: Proportions of DLD participant groups, weighted by sample sizes, that showed structural anomalies in each brain (sub)structure (shown as percentages).
Fig. 3: Proportions of DLD participant groups, weighted by sample sizes, that showed structural anomalies in the neostriatum after subdividing it.
Fig. 4: Proportions of DLD participant groups, weighted by sample sizes, that showed functional imaging anomalies in each brain (sub)structure (shown as percentages).

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Data availability

A spreadsheet presenting the coded data for our primary analyses (that is, the data from the 22 papers that examined the structural neuroanatomy of DLD, and the 11 papers that examined functional imaging in DLD), together with accompanying documentation, is available in Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/3bpa4/).

Code availability

Analysis code will be provided upon request.

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Acknowledgements

Support was provided by NIH R01 HD049347 (M.T.U.), NIH R21 HD 087088 (M.T.U.), NSF BCS 1439290 (M.T.U.), NSF BCS 1940980 (M.T.U.), and the Mabel H. Flory Trust (M.T.U. and P.E.T.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. The authors wish to thank S. Earle, J. Lum, C. Conway, E. Plante, K. Shattuck and G. Conti-Ramsden for comments, and K. Spurlock, R. Reichle, R. Campbell, G. A. McQuaid, K. Tagarelli and J. Reifegerste for help on previous searches or previous versions of tables or figures.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Gillian M. Clark, Peter E. Turkeltaub.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brain and Language Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA

    Michael T. Ullman, Mariel Y. Pullman & Jarrett T. Lovelett

  2. Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, School of Psychology, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia

    Gillian M. Clark

  3. Mount Sinai Beth Israel, New York, NY, USA

    Mariel Y. Pullman

  4. Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Jarrett T. Lovelett

  5. Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Elizabeth I. Pierpont

  6. Department of Neuroscience, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA

    Xiong Jiang

  7. Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA

    Peter E. Turkeltaub

  8. Research Division, MedStar National Rehabilitation Network, Washington DC, USA

    Peter E. Turkeltaub

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Contributions

M.T.U., M.Y.P. and P.E.T. conceived the ideas for this paper. M.T.U. and G.M.C. wrote the paper, with contributions from all authors. P.E.T. developed the permutation-based analyses. X.J. wrote the MATLAB code to perform the analyses. G.M.C. performed the searches and analyses and created the tables and figures, under guidance from M.T.U. and with help from M.Y.P., J.T.L. and E.I.P.

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Correspondence to Michael T. Ullman.

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Nature Human Behaviour thanks Annabel Chen, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Methods, Results, Figs. 1 and 2, and Tables 1–19.

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Ullman, M.T., Clark, G.M., Pullman, M.Y. et al. The neuroanatomy of developmental language disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Nat Hum Behav (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01843-6

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