Hong Kong: Patterns: Dyslexia as Different as Day and Night

[Harold Schiffman]

Patterns: Dyslexia as Different as Day and Night


By ERIC NAGOURNEY
Published: April 15, 2008
A dyslexic in Hong Kong is not the same as a dyslexic in Chicago.

Web Link: A Structural–Functional Basis for Dyslexia in the Cortex of
Chinese Readers (PNAS)

Both may find it harder to make their way through even fairly simple
written material than other people to do. But a new study finds that
their brain mechanics as they try to read may be as different as
Chinese is from English. The report, which appeared last week in The
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that changes in
the brain that may contribute to dyslexia are different for English
speakers and Chinese speakers. The difference may be explained by the
fact that English is an alphabetic language, the researchers said. A
reader sees a letter and associates it with a sound. Chinese
characters, on the other hand, correspond to syllables and require
much more memorization.

When the researchers used functional M.R.I. machines to look at the
workings of the brain in Chinese- and English-speaking dyslexics, they
found that in the English speakers there was weak reading activity in
the temporoparietal and occipitotemporal regions. In the Chinese,
differences were found in the left middle frontal gyrus region. "The
fact that Chinese and Western dyslexics show structural abnormalities
in different brain regions suggests that dyslexia may even be two
different brain disorders in two cultures," the researchers wrote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/health/research/15patt.html?sq=dyslexia&st=nyt&adxnnl=1&scp=1&adxnnlx=1208628978-r6DRLQR/QuXP3ycy6LyoDA
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