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Neuroanatomy of developmental dyslexia: Pitfalls and promise.
Journal article

Neuroanatomy of developmental dyslexia: Pitfalls and promise.

  • Ramus F Laboratoire de sciences cognitives et psycholinguistique (CNRS, ENS, EHESS, PSL Research University), Ecole Normale Supérieure, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France. Electronic address: franck.ramus@ens.fr.
  • Altarelli I Brain and Learning Lab, Campus Biotech, University of Geneva, 9 Chemin des Mines, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland.
  • Jednoróg K Laboratory of Psychophysiology, Department of Neurophysiology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Polish Academy of Sciences, 3 Pasteur St, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland.
  • Zhao J School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University and Key Laboratory for Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710062, China.
  • Scotto di Covella L Laboratoire de sciences cognitives et psycholinguistique (CNRS, ENS, EHESS, PSL Research University), Ecole Normale Supérieure, 29 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France.
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  • 2017-08-12
Published in:
  • Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews. - 2018
Brain volume
Diffusion imaging
Dyslexia
Neuroanatomy
Planum temporale
Voxel-based morphometry
Brain
Dyslexia
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Neuroimaging
English Investigations into the neuroanatomical bases of developmental dyslexia have now spanned more than 40 years, starting with the post-mortem examination of a few individual brains in the 60s and 70s, and exploding in the 90s with the widespread use of MRI. The time is now ripe to reappraise the considerable amount of data gathered with MRI using different types of sequences (T1, diffusion, spectroscopy) and analysed using different methods (manual, voxel-based or surface-based morphometry, fractional anisotropy and tractography, multivariate analyses…). While selective reviews of mostly small-scale studies seem to provide a coherent view of the brain disruptions that are typical of dyslexia, involving left perisylvian and occipito-temporal regions, we argue that this view may be deceptive and that meta-analyses and large-scale studies rather highlight many inconsistencies and limitations. We discuss problems inherent to small sample size as well as methodological difficulties that still undermine the discovery of reliable neuroanatomical bases of dyslexia, and we outline some recommendations to further improve this research area.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/216446
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