Study: Reading Changes the Brain; Dyslexics' Brains Less Active In Reading

There was a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience that had two interesting findings:

1.  Dyslexic children's brains work harder than those of  younger children who are reading at the same level as the dyslexic children.

2. In non-dyslexic children, as reading skill increases, brain usage changes.

The imaging studies are fascinating.  You know what I'd like too see next?  A large-scale before-and-after study on brain changes, examining several therapies for dyslexia:

• An Orton-Gillingham based program.  (I'd vote for Lindamood Bell, as it is the most standardized--meaning that there's a teaching protocol and a large number of individuals trained in the protocol.)
• Davis Dyslexia Correction
• Dore (the treatment claims to "cure" dyslexia)

Details of the study

 

We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, with a rhyme judgment task, in which we compared dyslexic children with two control groups: age-matched children and reading-matched children (younger normal readers equated for reading ability or scanner-performance to the dyslexic children).

Dyslexic children exhibited reduced activation relative to both age-matched and reading-matched children in the left parietotemporal cortex and five other regions, including the right parietotemporal cortex. The dyslexic children also exhibited reduced activation bilaterally in the parietotemporal cortex when compared with children equated for task performance during scanning. Nine of the 10 dyslexic children exhibited reduced left parietotemporal activation compared with their individually selected age-matched or reading-matched control children.

Additionally, normal reading fifth graders showed more activation in the same bilateral parietotemporal regions than normal-reading third graders. 

   

  (In other words, learning to read well and fluently changes the brain)

These findings indicate that the activation differences seen in the dyslexic children cannot be accounted for by either current reading level or scanner task performance, but instead represent a distinct developmental atypicality in the neural systems that support learning to read.

 

The Eides make the following point:
 

t's not surprising why so many bright dyslexics will fall between the cracks in the school system - even if they master the code of reading for comprehension, they fail to be identified as having a disability and are penalized for not finishing tests or papers, or required reading on time.
 
A study such as this also underscores the problems of defining dyslexia on the basis of reading performance.

(lead author: Fumiko Maeda Hoeft, citation The Journal of Neuroscience, October 18, 2006, 26(42):10700-10708; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4931-05.2006)

Comments

[John A. Hayes]

That the brain showes differences between third and fifth grade normal readers I would think of as expected. What would be unexpected would be that there were no differences.

It is well documented that the brain starts forming connections after birth that are the result of the information that it processes. The brain is not a static organ. To say (In other words, learning to read well and fluently changes the brain) infers that reading is different in that it changes the brain.

Living changes the brain! Watching TV changes the brain! Interacting with anything changes the brain! Most of the dramatic changes take place while the brain matures and is still forming connections so it would be expected to see changes when someone is learning a task at a young age.

I agree that it would be nice to find that you could see different benefits from different interventions using fMRI methods. As the state of the art is now I do not believe that anyone claims that with all of the differences that are seen that fMRI CAN EVEN TELL IF A PERSON IS DYSLEXIC OR NOT.

9 out of 10 dyslexics showed..............
1 out of 10 dyslexics must have tested in the normal range.

Did any non-dyslexics test in the range of the dyslexics?

Does anyone ever notice that these fMRI studies are just descriptive. The study I would like to see done is to have a mix of dyslexic and non-dyslexic people scanned and see how many dyslexics could be identified correctly without the researcher knowing which person was dyslexic.

I am not saying that fMRI studies are not valuable research just that they always focus on one area of the brain and find differences there between dyslexics and non-dyslexics.