Beyond phonological processing deficits in adult dyslexics: atypical FMRI activation patterns for spatial problem solving.

It is unclear the extent to which neurodevelopmental differences observed in reading disabled individuals are limited to traditional language processing areas. Some have suggested atypical processing of complex spatial problems in these individuals. Hitherto, research on this question has been limited to behavioral studies, yielding mixed results. Absence of related imaging studies is in stark contrast to the plethora examining functional neurology for verbal tasks. This study uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine how adult dyslexics perform when analyzing complex spatial material unrelated to the reading of text. We observed atypical functional neurology during spatial problem solving, which was not observed behaviorally.