As a keystone academic skill, reading is learned in most countries within the first years after school enrolment. Developmental dyslexia (DYS) is a specific learning disorder of reading, often co-occurring with impairments in written expression, affecting around 5-10% of school children. Children with DYS typically encounter severe scholastic, academic and professional disadvantages across their lifespan, and are at risk for psychological distress and mental health problems. Fluent reading relies on a predominantly left lateralized, highly specialized network of brain areas that act in concert to process words. In this session we present novel neuroimaging findings on DYS and DYS-risk from the prereader to the school child. Non-invasive neuroimaging techniques such as even-related potentials (ERP), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), structural MRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) yield insight into underlying deficits in brain networks of children with DYS. Moreover, alterations in the neuronal activation patterns of processing visual print or phonological information in pre- and beginning readers highlight the potential of neuronal measures to improve the prediction of children’s reading outcomes and/or the response to interventions.
PhD Katarzyna Jednoróg‘s talk focusses on neuronal correlates of phonological awareness in the brain, as a key factor in reading acquisition. Pronounced hypoactivation in core areas of the language network of young pre- and beginning readers suggest a dysfunction in processing phonological representations.
Prof. Maaike Vandermosten‘s talk addresses the ongoing debate on whether well specified phonetic representations per se or impaired access to speech sounds underly deficient phonological processing in DYS. FMRI and DTI data suggest a deficit in phonetic representations in affected children.
MSc Georgette Pleisch presents data about visual character processing in preschoolers at varying familial risk for DYS. EEG and fMRI data demonstrate that emerging visual specialization in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex depends on learning performance and is modulated by precursor skills of reading.
PhD Gorka Fraga Gonzalez talk addresses alterations in ERPs after specific letter-speech sound fluency training in school children with DYS. The data indicate the potential of the N170 as a predictor of reading outcome and suggest that multisensory integration facilitiates visual specialization.