Language and reading skills in school-aged children and adolescents born preterm are associated with white matter properties on diffusion tensor imaging

► Language and reading measures are associated with white matter properties in children born preterm. ► The white matter network for language and reading was bilateral and widely distributed. ► Decoding skills were most strongly associated with fractional anisotropy in the corpus callosum. ► Verbal IQ and syntactic comprehension were most strongly associated with a right ventral pathway.