Contact: James Newton
james.newton@childrens.harvard.edu
617-919-3110
Children's Hospital Boston

Dyslexia and Sound

Caption: New research shows that children with dyslexia, compared to typical readers, have trouble processing fast-changing sounds. Scientists believe this prevents them from properly learning syllables when they first hear language, which later causes reading difficulties. In the test above, children listened to two types of sounds: sounds whose acoustic qualities changed quickly, as in normal speech, and slowed-down sounds that changed slowly. Yellow spots indicate brain areas that responded more strongly to fast-changing sounds than slow-changing sounds. Typical readers (Image A) used eleven brain areas more extensively when processing fast-changing as opposed to slow-changing sounds. In contrast, children with dyslexia (Image B) didn't show these differences; they used the same brain areas to the same degree to process both fast- and slow-changing sounds. After computer training, the lesser-used brain regions "awakened" (image C). The dyslexic children's brains processed fast-changing sounds more like typical readers' brains, and their reading improved.

Credit: Nadine Gaab, PhD, Children's Hospital Boston

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Related news release: Sound training rewires dyslexic children's brains for reading