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Dyslexia is a severe and persistent reading and spelling disorder caused by impairment in the ability to manipulate speech sounds. We combined functional magnetic resonance brain imaging with multivoxel pattern analysis and functional and structural connectivity analysis in an effort to disentangle whether dyslexics' phonological deficits are caused by poor quality of the phonetic representations or by difficulties in accessing intact phonetic representations. We found that phonetic representations are hosted bilaterally in primary and secondary auditory cortices and that their neural quality (in terms of robustness and distinctness) is intact in adults with dyslexia. However, the functional and structural connectivity between the bilateral auditory cortices and the left inferior frontal gyrus (a region involved in higher-level phonological processing) is significantly hampered in dyslexics, suggesting deficient access to otherwise intact phonetic representations.

Original publication

DOI

10.1126/science.1244333

Type

Journal article

Journal

Science

Publication Date

06/12/2013

Volume

342

Pages

1251 - 1254

Keywords

Adult, Auditory Cortex, Brain, Brain Mapping, Dyslexia, Female, Frontal Lobe, Humans, Linguistics, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Neural Pathways, Parietal Lobe, Phonetics, Reading, Speech Perception, Temporal Lobe, Young Adult