brain linked to dyslexia in children
Yale researchers have identified a disruption in the neural circuitry involved in reading in the brains of dyslexic children as young as age 7.
The authors of the study, published in the July 15 issue of Biological Psychiatry, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural circuitry for reading in 144 children ages 7 to 18. The study included good readers and those with reading disabilities.
"We previously demonstrated a disruption in the neural circuitry of adults, but we did not know if this disruption was just the end result of years of poor reading or if it was there from the beginning of the time a child should be able to read, which is around six or seven years old, so our study begins at that point," says study co-author Dr. Sally Shaywitz, professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine and co-director of the Yale Center for the Study of Learning and Attention.
The team located a region in the brain that relates to skilled reading. The better a child is reading, the more activity there is in this region of the brain. "If the child is given a reading test and scores high, then that region of the brain is more likely to be active," said the study's first author, Dr. Bennett Shaywitz, professor of pediatrics and neurology and in the Yale Child Study Center "This is the area that is disrupted in children who are dyslexic."
In good readers, certain areas on the left side of the brain are activated, explains Bennett Shaywitz, and in dyslexic children, there's a disruption in the back of the brain on the left side. The researchers also identified compensatory regions in other areas of the brain that dyslexic children use to read.
"Dyslexic children can't use the highly specialized area that is activated in good readers and therefore don't read automatically or fluently," he explains. "But because they develop compensatory systems on the front and the right side of the brain, they read more accurately over time, but remain slow readers. This study shows how the children can compensate, but it also shows the limitation of that compensation."
Dyslexia is a very common disorder affecting one out of five American children. The disorder is found in children of diverse aptitudes.
"It's a very important public health issue because it affects so many children," he says. "It affects children throughout their lives, and it has such an impact because in our modern society everything we do, we do through reading."
Bennett Shaywitze notes: "Before fMRI became available, there was no way to see inside the skull to see the brain at work. This can make a huge difference in our ability to understand and to see the mind at work."
Other authors on the study included Yale researchers R. Todd Constable, John Gore, Robert K. Fulbright, Karen E. Marchione, W. Einar Mencl, Kenneth R. Pugh and Pawel Skudlarski; Jack M. Fletcher of the University of Texas Medical School-Houston; and G. Reid Lyon of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.
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