Brain activity during processing objects and pseudo-objects: comparison between adult regular and dyslexic readers.

OBJECTIVE

The role of visual processing deficits in dyslexia remains unclear and continues to stir controversy. Most studies to date have used alphabetic and or other language-dependent patterns. The current study compares how dyslexics and regular readers process non-alphabetic visual patterns.

METHODS

The stimuli were black and white drawings, 50 meaningful (concrete objects) and 50 meaningless (pseudo-objects with no linguistic name) presented visually on a computer screen. Measures included behavioral accuracy and reaction time, event-related potential (ERP), and low resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA). The subjects were 15 dyslexic and 15 aged-matched regular readers.

RESULTS

The dyslexics exhibited significantly longer reaction time and shorter latencies of P1 and P2 components to both objects and pseudo-objects compared to the regular readers. Data from the LORETA solution analysis indicated significantly different brain activity between the two groups: both exhibited higher left hemisphere activation when viewing objects compared to pseudo-objects; and dyslexics exhibited lower left hemisphere activation when viewing objects and higher right hemisphere activation when viewing pseudo-objects during the early stages of processing.

CONCLUSIONS

The results support the notion that brain activation of dyslexic readers differs from that of the regular readers when processing non-alphabetic patterns, and that the differences appear from the early stage of processing.

SIGNIFICANCE: These results emphasize that differences in brain activity between dyslexic and regular readers can be seen even in a non-alphabetic task, and in early stages of processing.