Population specific templates are necessary for

Population-specific templates are necessary for modern structural and functional neuroimaging research. This work, along with studies conducted by Lee et al. (2005) and Tang et al. (2010) imply that selective estrogen receptor modulators templates created with North American populations do not provide optimal references for processing MR brain images of Chinese or Asian populations. Similarly, our study and several other neuroimaging studies examining North American developmental populations (Altaye et al., 2008; Muzik et al., 2000; Wilke et al., 2002), suggest that using average adult MRI templates for research with infants and children may result in excessive deformation, inaccurate measurements, and the misinterpretation of results (Richards and Xie, 2015). Therefore, population-specific (e.g., age, nationality) should be recommended to promote the quality and accuracy of measurements and interpretations. This current study should lay the foundation for creating more comprehensive population-specific templates, such as younger Asian child templates and gender-specific Asian child templates, in the future. In conclusion, Chinese age-specific average MRI templates are recommended for neuroimaging research with Chinese or Asian children and adolescents. We have created the first brain and head average MRI templates constructed specifically for Asian pediatric populations. Given the similarity between the Korean (Lee et al., 2005) and Chinese (Tang et al., 2010) adult MRI templates, it is likely that these templates will be useful for research with other Asian pediatric populations as well. Our Chinese age-specific pediatric templates may be used to replace or complement the default templates included in popular neuroimaging processing programs (e.g., FSL, SPM).
Template availability The Chinese average head and brain MRI templates are publicly available for research including clinical and experimental studies of brain development. Data access is limited to scientific professionals for research purposes. The template volumes are available in compressed NIFTI format (http://nifti.nimh.nih.gov). The data are on a file server that may be accessed with the Secure Shell (SSH) file transfer protocols (SCP or SFTP). Instructions for access are given online on our website: (http://jerlab.psych.sc.edu/NeurodevelopmentalMRIDatabase/ChineseChildren).
Conflicts of interest
Introduction Perceptual expertise for visual words enables individuals to rapidly and effortlessly decode visual words (McCandliss et al., 2003). At the neural level, a cortical area located in the left occipito-temporal cortex (termed as Visual Word Form Area, VWFA) has been identified for specifically processing written words (e.g. Cohen et al., 2000; McCandliss et al., 2003; Cohen and Dehaene, 2004; Liu et al., 2013). This area has been proposed to be associated with a negative ERP component, termed as N170, elicited by visual words between 150ms and 250ms after the onset of stimuli (Allison et al., 1994; Maurer et al., 2005a; Rossion et al., 2003; Brem et al., 2006). Compared to meaningless symbols, the word-related N170 shows larger amplitude in the left occipital-temporal region in skilled readers (Maurer et al., 2005a, 2006, 2008; Bentin et al., 1999). Further, this effect can be observed in different writing systems (Baker et al., 2007; Maurer et al., 2008; Wong et al., 2005; Lin et al., 2011; Zhao et al., 2012). N170 markers for word expertise develop rapidly after children receive formal training in schools (Maurer et al., 2006; Brem et al., 2009; Cao et al., 2011; Zhao et al., 2014) and are attenuated in children who suffer from, or are at risk of dyslexia (Maurer et al., 2006; Brem et al., 2013). Word-related N170 expertise emerges even before children receive formal training. A higher N170 for words, relative to symbols, in the right hemisphere was found in kindergarten children (6 years old) with high letter knowledge (Maurer et al., 2005b). This N170 selectivity for words, together with left-lateralization, was also found in Chinese kindergarten children with high reading ability (S. Li et al., 2013).