Séminaire Cognition du Jeudi 08 Mars

Pre-diagnostic neurobiological markers of dyslexia: A longitudinal MRI-study (présentation en Anglais)

Dyslexia is generally considered to have a biological origin, yet limited evidence is available on whether the brain anomalies observed in adults and school-aged children with dyslexia predate reading onset. In order to address this fundamental question, we collected diffusion MRI (dMRI) and anatomical MRI (T1) data before and two years after reading onset in 65 children with and without a family risk for dyslexia. One year later, when a dyslexia diagnosis could be given, participants were divided in dyslexic readers, typical readers without a family risk for dyslexia, and 21 typical readers with a family risk. In addition, at the second time point, we collected fMRI data to investigate whether young dyslexic readers have problems in phonetic representation. Although this is assumed a key problem in dyslexia, previous studies in adults have failed to find evidence for such a representational deficits (Boets et al., 2013; Ramus et al., 2003). During my talk, I will present our findings on the neurodevelopmental trajectory in structural connectivity and regional morphology in dyslexic and typical readers as well as our fMRI findings on a phonetic representational deficit. Finally, I will also discuss the methodological issues that are associated with MRI-analyses in pediatric samples. 

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maaike_Vandermosten2