Dysfunction in neural adaptation to words might be at the core of reading impairment. Children with dyslexia can present difficulties recognizing similarities between repeated linguistic stimuli, as evidenced by a lack of reduced activations (adaptation) in brain regions associated with reading. fMRI Rapid Adaptation (fMRI-RA) provides a sensitive index of the quality of orthographic and phonological representations to some degree independent of the access to those representations. We used fMRI-RA to compare neural adaptation in children (10.01–14.16 y.o.) with dyslexia (DYS; n = 32) and typically reading controls (CON; n = 40). Phonological adaptation was measured in the left temporoparietal cortex (TPC) and orthographic adaptation in the left anterior ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOT). In TPC, the Group × Condition interaction reached trend level. Planned contrasts, conducted based on a priori hypotheses, were nevertheless consistent with greater phonological selectivity in CON than DYS. Both groups showed comparable orthographic adaptation in VOT. These findings suggest a preserved neural adaptation effect for short, easy, high-frequency words in the VOT in dyslexia group. In sum, reading difficulties may reflect not only single modality deficit but also variations in how orthographic and phonological representations are integrated, highlighting the importance of approaches that examine the interaction between these processes.

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A paper published in Molecular Psychiatry, led by researchers from Queen Mary University of London and Royal Holloway, University of London, challenges the way we think about neurodevelopmental conditions.

The study suggests it would be better for experts to focus on a broad constellation of traits (a “neurodevelopmental spectrum”) to identify potential challenges and support children and young people, rather than looking at individual conditions like autism, ADHD and dyslexia in isolation.

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A recent study conducted by the University of Edinburgh has revealed genetic links between dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The study found that dyslexia and ADHD often co-occur and share many genes, distinguishing them from other developmental and mental health conditions such as autism and schizophrenia. The findings could potentially inform the development of targeted support systems for individuals with dyslexia or ADHD. The study analyzed large datasets of genetic information and identified specific genetic regions and genes that overlap between dyslexia and ADHD. The research is published in the Journal Molecular Psychiatry and was supported by various organizations including Wellcome and the Max Planck Society. [Extracted from the article]

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The brain’s capacity to use and understand language expands rapidly in the first years of life, as babies start to make sense of the words they hear and eventually begin to piece together sentences of their own. The language-processing parts of the brain that make this possible continue to evolve in older children, as they expand their vocabularies and learn to use language more flexibly.

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