Severe and persistent reading and spelling impairment linked with difficulties in processing speech sounds (developmental dyslexia) may be associated with under-action of an area of the brain.
Establishing an underlying organic basis for dyslexia has been a controversial area in recent years, but a team based at the University of Leipzig has used functional MRI scanning on dyslexic adults.
They found that there was a dysfunction in the auditory sensory thalamus, the medial geniculate body (MGB), while all other structures in the auditory pathway behaved comparably with those in control patients without dyslexia.
Furthermore, MGB activity correlated with dyslexia diagnostic scores, indicating that the task modulation of the MGB is critical for performance in dyslexics. The authors of the research, published this week in the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US, suggest that 'deficits in dyslexia are associated with a failure of the neural mechanism that dynamically tunes the MGB according to predictions from cortical areas to optimise speech processing.'
Register now to continue reading
Thank you for visiting Optician Online. Register now to access up to 10 news and opinion articles a month.
Register
Already have an account? Sign in here
