Differences in cortico-cortical functional connections between children with good and poor handwriting: A case study

Abstract

The aim of the study is to investigate the directional connectivity in brain between children who has good handwriting and poor handwriting. Two children participated in the case study. Test subject was the one that showed symptoms of handwriting difficulty and was identified by her teacher as below average writer. Control subject on the other hand was the one that did not show any symptom of handwriting difficulty and was confirmed by her teacher as average writer. Subjects must trace on the digitizing tablet three different unlined shapes. While doing the drawing task, brain signal were recorded using electroencephalogram (EEG) machine to analyze the information pathway using partial directed coherence (PDC) method in Linux open source. Results showed that subject with poor handwriting mostly drew with non-preferred movement and the brain region that became the source of functional coupling was the frontal region where planning and organizing for execution are performed. Mean-while, subject with good handwriting had performed the tracing with preferred movement and PDC showed that the information source came from occipital area, an indication of visual input and sinked to various brain regions, including temporal area for recognizing shape and frontal area for planning and organizing movement. As conclusion, brain analysis of poor handwriting child shows that the movement planning was poorly executed since frontal area does not have any input from any other sources compared to the brain of good handwriting child which had some input from other sources that makes movement well-planned.