Abstract
The proposed left hemisphere dysfunction in dyslexia was investigated in a review of four studies using regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF; N=152) and combined auditory evoked responses (AERs) with positron emission tomography (PET) (N=20). In contrast to the positive relation that was found between temporal rCBF and orthographic task accuracy, an inverse correlation was found phonemic in normals between task accuracy and left temporal rCBF activation, near Heschl's gyrus. Dyslexics, by contrast, showed a positive correlation between Heschl's gyrus activation (by PET and rCBF) and phonemic processing accuracy. The AER's at C3 for an early positive component (P1) showed that these relationships were true both on hit trials and correct rejection trials, indicating that the perceptual rather than motoric or selective attention aspects of the task were being measured. Methodological issues were emphasized, including the difficulty of interpreting mean differences in brain activity at a given site without considering the separate multivariate structures that might exist in the two populations.
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Wood, F., Flowers, L., Buchsbaum, M. et al. Investigation of abnormal left temporal functioning in dyslexia through rCBF, auditory evoked potentials, and positron emisson tomography. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 3, 379–393 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00354969
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00354969