Dyslexia also depending on the language

Dyslexia affects different parts of the child's brain depending on whether the child is nurtured in an English or Chinese speaking environment. This finding is published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , helping therapists need to use different support measures for dyslexic children in different cultures. .

According to the main author of the Li-Hai Tan project, lecturer on linguistics, brain science and cognition at Hong Kong University: 'This finding is surprising. We never thought that the brains of children with dyslexia would be different in children reading English or Chinese. Our results have resulted in neurobiological evidence that causes dyslexia. '

Millions of children around the world suffer from dyslexia, a language disability that includes reading, spelling, writing and pronunciation. The World Association of Dyslexia says there is still no consensus on the exact number because not all children are tested, but the estimate is about 8-15% of students.

Reading the language based on Latin letters like English requires different skills than reading Chinese, the language is less demanding in terms of negative expression but using symbols to display words.

Some previous studies suggest that the brain can use different neural networks for different languages, but none has shown that there are different brain structures involved.

Tan's team examined the brains of students living in a Chinese environment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Then compare this result with the brains of students who live in an English environment.

Guinevere F. Eden, director of the Research Center at Georgetown University in Washington, says the process of becoming a skilled reader will change the brain.'Becoming a reader is a hard work for the brain.'

For children, learning to read is culturally important but not a natural process, so when the brain moves to another writing system, it will have to deal with it differently. For example, children who speak English learn the sounds of letters and how to connect them to words, while Chinese children remember hundreds of symbols that display words.

'The meaning of this is that when we study the ability to read, we have to go into different parts of the brain depending on the writing system the child learns.' That means 'we cannot assume that any child with dyslexia will be supported by the same intervention.'

Tan said the new finding suggests treatment for people who are difficult to read using Chinese can use working memory exercises related to motor-sensory skills, while Current methods for people with English dyslexia focus and convert sounds-letters and sound recognition.

He said that the cause of brain structural defects in people who are difficult to read is still unanswered.

'Previous genetic studies suggest that brain development deficiencies are related to variants of some genes and dyslexia derived from genes. We estimate that there are different genes related to dyslexia in English and Chinese readers. In this respect, findings on brain diagrams may aid in the search for genes that are difficult to read, ' Tan said.

In their work, the researchers noted the study of brain images of dyslexic children using Latin-character languages ​​such as English that identified unusual functions and structures in the peak-sun region, thought to be related to the letter-to-sound conversion during reading; The mid-upper temporal cortex is thought to be related to speech analysis, and the temporal lumbar papilla, which can serve as a rapid morphological recognition system.

However, when they conducted a similar study in Chinese children who were difficult to read, they found an abnormality in another area, the left central forehead area.

The research was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and the University of Hong Kong.

In another study published two years ago, scientists at the University of Michigan showed that Asians and North Americans have a different way of seeing the world. When viewed with a photograph, European-based North American students pay much attention to the object in the near direction of the scene, while Chinese students spend a lot of time studying the background and observing the whole scene. .