With the help of a brain scan, researchers have found what could be the tool to diagnose children with dyslexia early in life.
A research team from the USC-San Francisco wanted to know if there's a correlation between the development of the brain's white matter, which is the center for reading and speech, and childhood dyslexia.
To know the answer, they chose 38 children in their kindergarten to be their test subjects. It's believed that children begin reading by the time they reach such school age. They then used a brain scan to track the development of the brain's white matter until the kids reached third grade, a time when they should already be proficient in reading.
Based on the results, they realized that the child's ability to read is associated with the volume of white matter. Moreover, brain scans were also able to detect reading difficulties among children with an accuracy of 60% than using conventional measures.
Conventionally, doctors use the cognitive ability and behavior, including his ability to speak, as well as social and economic status, reading readiness, and genetics to determine the child's risk of having learning and reading problems. The study, therefore, is the first to use a brain scan to assess such risk on a medical level.
The researchers hope that with such studies such as theirs, children who are at risk with dyslexia will be diagnosed early, even before they can begin reading, and not later in life when challenges are more pronounced and they feel they are a failure for being such poor readers. The study may also help teachers provide a more personalized intervention and education to children with dyslexia.
Dyslexia is a learning difficulty characterized by problems with reading, speech, memory, and math. Some of the famous dyslexics include Jay Leno, Pablo Picasso, Whoopi Goldberg, and Virgin Enterprises founder Richard Branson.
You can read the full details of the study in Psychology Science website.
