Neural mechanisms of reading in children with dyslexia, typically developing children and healthy adults: An Meg study

       Dyslexia is one of the most common childhood learning disabilities, difficulties with reading accuracy and/or fluency. Despite the extensive amount of neuroimaging research in this field, the brain basis and core causes of dyslexia types are not yet fully understood (Norton et al., 2014; Sun et al., 2009). Understanding the neural mechanisms of reading in children with different types of dyslexia will help to identify the main reasons of the specific patterns of weaknesses that undermine learning to read and may promote effective intervention for children before they experience prolonged reading failure.
       The goal of the current project is to study the neural dynamics of the brain areas involved in reading in children with different types of dyslexia compared with an age-matched group of typically developing children and healthy adult subjects. To do this we use Magnetoencephalography (MEG), the only non-invasive neurophysiological technique with both perfect temporal and high spatial resolution. In other words, it is possible to register neurophysiological processes and localize the sources of the activity within the brain with a high level of precision. The locations of the sources are superimposed on anatomical images, such as MRI, to provide information about both the structure and function of the brain.
       To investigate the neural dynamics of the brain during reading we have designed an experimental paradigm with three types of stimuli involved: words with high frequency, words with low frequency and pseudowords of Russian language. During the task, the subjects are instructed to read the stimuli and to say some of them aloud when a question mark randomly appears on a screen. The stimuli were chosen based on the Russian Word List by Frequency (Ляшевская, Шаров, 2009). Pseudowords were generated automatically according to the rules of Russian phonotactics (Keuleers & Brysbaert, 2010).
       All in all, the MEG data will be collected in a group of 30 typically developing children (age range 7-11), 30 children with dyslexia (age range 7-11) and 30 healthy adults (age range 18-60). This project will allow us to identify neural mechanisms of reading in children with dyslexia and to understand how these mechanisms relate to the specific patterns of reading weaknesses.