Unidirectional dyslexia in a polyglot. (1/545)

Alexia is usually seen after ischaemic insults to the dominant parietal lobe. A patient is described with a particular alexia to reading Hebrew (right to left), whereas no alexia was noted when reading in English. This deficit evolved after a hypertensive right occipitoparietal intracerebral haemorrhage, and resolved gradually over the ensuing year as the haematoma was resorbed. The deficit suggests the existence of a separate, language associated, neuronal network within the right hemisphere important to different language reading modes.  (+info)

Cortical auditory signal processing in poor readers. (2/545)

Magnetoencephalographic responses recorded from auditory cortex evoked by brief and rapidly successive stimuli differed between adults with poor vs. good reading abilities in four important ways. First, the response amplitude evoked by short-duration acoustic stimuli was stronger in the post-stimulus time range of 150-200 ms in poor readers than in normal readers. Second, response amplitude to rapidly successive and brief stimuli that were identical or that differed significantly in frequency were substantially weaker in poor readers compared with controls, for interstimulus intervals of 100 or 200 ms, but not for an interstimulus interval of 500 ms. Third, this neurological deficit closely paralleled subjects' ability to distinguish between and to reconstruct the order of presentation of those stimulus sequences. Fourth, the average distributed response coherence evoked by rapidly successive stimuli was significantly weaker in the beta- and gamma-band frequency ranges (20-60 Hz) in poor readers, compared with controls. These results provide direct electrophysiological evidence supporting the hypothesis that reading disabilities are correlated with the abnormal neural representation of brief and rapidly successive sensory inputs, manifested in this study at the entry level of the cortical auditory/aural speech representational system(s).  (+info)

Spatio-temporal contrast sensitivity, coherent motion, and visible persistence in developmental dyslexia. (3/545)

Three experiments measured spatio-temporal contrast sensitivity, coherent motion, and visible persistence in a single group of children with developmental dyslexia and a matched control group. The findings were consistent with a transient channel disorder in the dyslexic group which showed a reduction in contrast sensitivity at low spatial frequencies, a significant reduction in sensitivity for coherent motion, and a significantly longer duration of visible persistence. The results were also examined by classifying the dyslexic group into dyseidetic, dysphonetic, and mixed (dysphoneidetic) subgroups. There were no differences between the control and dyseidetic groups in contrast sensitivity, in coherent motion and in visible persistence. In comparison to the control group, the mixed (dysphoneidetic) dyslexic subgroup was found to have a significant reduction in contrast sensitivity at low spatial frequencies, a significant reduction in sensitivity for coherent motion, and a significantly longer duration of visible persistence. In comparison to the control group, the dysphonetic group only showed a reduction in contrast sensitivity at low spatial frequencies. Comparisons between the dyseidetic, dysphonetic and mixed dyslexic subgroups showed that there were no substantive differences in contrast sensitivity, coherent motion, and visible persistence. The results support the proposal and findings by Borsting et al. (Borsting E, Ridder WH, Dudeck K, Kelley C, Matsui L, Motoyama J. Vis Res 1996;36:1047-1053) that a transient channel disorder may only be present in a dysphoneidetic dyslexic subgroup. Psychometric assessment revealed that all the children with dyslexia appear to have a concurrent disorder in phonological coding, temporal order processing, and short-term memory.  (+info)

Auditory stream segregation in dyslexic adults. (4/545)

Developmental dyslexia is often associated with problems in phonological processing based on, or accompanied by, deficits in the perception of rapid auditory changes. Thirteen dyslexic adults and 18 control subjects were tested on sequences of alternating tones of high (1000 Hz) and low (400 Hz) pitch, which at short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) led to perceptual separation of the sound sequence into high- and low-pitched streams. The control subjects perceived the tone sequence as connected down to SOAs of 130 ms, with segregation of the streams at shorter SOAs; in dyslexic subjects the segregation occurred already at 210 ms. Auditory stream segregation has previously been shown to impair the detection of phoneme order in segments of speech sounds. The observed aberrant segregation of sound streams in dyslexic subjects might thus contribute to their difficulties in achieving awareness of phonemes or phoneme order and in the acquisition of literacy.  (+info)

Dissociation of normal feature analysis and deficient processing of letter-strings in dyslexic adults. (5/545)

Neuroimaging studies have revealed that the functional organization of reading differs between developmentally dyslexic and non-impaired individuals. However, it is not clear how early in the reading process the differences between fluent and dyslexic readers start to emerge. We studied cortical activity of ten dyslexic adults using magnetoencephalography (MEG), as they silently read words or viewed symbol-strings which were clearly visible or degraded with Gaussian noise. This method has previously been used to dissociate between analysis of local features and pre-lexical word processing in fluent adult readers. Signals peaking around 100 ms after stimulus onset and originating in the postero-medial extrastriate cortex were associated with increasing local luminance contrast in the noise patches. These early visual responses were similar in dyslexic and non-impaired readers. In contrast, the letter-string-specific responses peaking around 150 ms predominantly in the left inferior occipito-temporal cortex in fluent readers were undetectable in dyslexic readers. Thus, while the early visual processing seems intact in dyslexic adults, the pattern of cortical activation starts to differ from that of fluent readers at the point where letter-string-specific signals first emerge during reading.  (+info)

Explicit and implicit processing of words and pseudowords by adult developmental dyslexics: A search for Wernicke's Wortschatz? (6/545)

Two groups of male university students who had been diagnosed as dyslexic when younger, and two groups of control subjects of similar age and IQ to the dyslexics, were scanned whilst reading aloud and during a task where reading was implicit. The dyslexics performed less well than their peers on a range of literacy tasks and were strikingly impaired on phonological tasks. In the reading aloud experiment, simple words and pseudowords were presented at a slow pace so that reading accuracy was equal for dyslexics and controls. Relative to rest, both normal and dyslexic groups activated the same peri- and extra-sylvian regions of the left hemisphere that are known to be involved in reading. However, the dyslexic readers showed less activation than controls in the left posterior inferior temporal cortex [Brodmann area (BA) 37, or Wernicke's Wortschatz], left cerebellum, left thalamus and medial extrastriate cortex. In the implicit reading experiment, word and pseudoword processing was contrasted to visually matched false fonts while subjects performed a feature detection paradigm. The dyslexic readers showed reduced activation in BA 37 relative to normals suggesting that this group difference, seen in both experiments, resides in highly automated aspects of the reading process. Since BA 37 has been implicated previously in modality-independent naming, the reduced activation may indicate a specific impairment in lexical retrieval. Interestingly, during the reading aloud experiment only, there was increased activation for the dyslexics relative to the controls in a pre-motor region of Broca's area (BA 6/44). We attribute this result to the enforced use of an effortful compensatory strategy involving sublexical assembly of articulatory routines. The results confirm previous findings that dyslexic readers process written stimuli atypically, based on abnormal functioning of the left hemisphere reading system. More specifically, we localize this deficit to the neural system underlying lexical retrieval.  (+info)

A new gene (DYX3) for dyslexia is located on chromosome 2. (7/545)

Developmental dyslexia is a specific reading disability affecting children and adults who otherwise possess normal intelligence, cognitive skills, and adequate schooling. Difficulties in spelling and reading may persist through adult life. Possible localisations of genes for dyslexia have been reported on chromosomes 15 (DYX1), 6p21.3-23 (DYX2), and 1p over the last 15 years. Only the localisation to 6p21.3-23 has been clearly confirmed and a genome search has not previously been carried out. We have investigated a large Norwegian family in which dyslexia is inherited as an autosomal dominant trait. A genome wide search for linkage with an average 20 cM marker density was initiated in 36 of the 80 family members. The linkage analysis was performed under three different diagnostic models. Linkage analysis in the family identified a region in 2p15-p16 which cosegregated with dyslexia. Maximum lod scores of 3.54, 2.92, and 4.32 for the three different diagnostic models were obtained. These results were confirmed by a non-parametric multipoint GENEHUNTER analysis in which the most likely placement of the gene was in a 4 cM interval between markers D2S2352 and D2S1337. Localisation of a gene for dyslexia to 2p15-16, together with the confirmed linkage to 6p21.3-23, constitute strong evidence for genetic heterogeneity in dyslexia. Since no gene for dyslexia has been isolated, little is known about the molecular processes involved. The isolation and molecular characterisation of this newly reported gene on chromosome 2 (DYX3) and DYX1 will thus provide new and exciting insights into the processes involved in reading and spelling.  (+info)

A problem with auditory processing? (8/545)

Recent studies have found associations between auditory processing deficits and language disorders such as dyslexia; but whether the former cause the latter, or simply co-occur with them, is still an open question.  (+info)