Category Archives: Research

Shared neurodevelopmental spectrum could link ADHD, autism and dyslexia to later outcomes

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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.

Read more HERE

Dyslexia and ADHD share genetic links, DNA study shows.

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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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Language development in the brain

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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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Researchers successfully mimic dyslexia in an AI brain

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For the first time researchers have used an advanced AI model that understands both images and language allowing them to model dyslexia, paving the way for potential new treatments.

Dyslexia, the world’s most common learning disorder impacting reading, spelling and writing, is estimated to affect up to 20% of the global population. Until now, traditional approaches to studying dyslexia, such as behavioral and neuroimaging methods, have provided valuable insights but remain limited in their ability to test the underlying mechanisms of reading impairments.

Now, researchers from EPFL’s NeuroAI Lab , part of the Schools of Computer and Communication Sciences and Life Sciences have modelled dyslexia using next-generation Vision Language Models, that can fully model the whole pipeline from seeing words to processing and understanding the context.

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Why some children with learning difficulties get identified – and others don’t

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A major study has revealed that where a child goes to school plays a role in whether they get diagnosed with a specific learning difficulty or not. Lead author, Dr Johny Daniel explains.

Two children sit in different schools. Both struggle to read. Both have similar low scores on national tests. But while one gets a diagnosis of specific learning difficulties and a package of support, the other is left to fall behind.

My colleagues and I have carried out new research analysing the records of around 540,000 primary school children across England. It reveals a troubling picture. Whether a child gets identified with specific learning difficulties – an umbrella term for conditions involving difficulties with reading and mathematics – depends not just on how they perform academically, but on the school they go to, their gender, their family’s income, their first language, and even the average ability of their classmates.

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A Pilot Study of Sentence Writing Instruction for a First Grader with a Learning Disability

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Sentence writing is a critical early writing skill (Kim et al., 2014) but is often overlooked in empirical literature (McMaster et al., 2018). The current pilot study evaluated the effect of a set of explicit sentence writing lessons on a first grader’s writing and identified the types of errors made before and during instruction.

Read the findings HERE