The Washington Times

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

NEW YORK, July 8 (UPI) -- Dyslexia appears to be caused by two distinct types of brain problems, a new study has found. Researchers from Yale used scanning devices to examine the brains of 43 young adults with known reading disabilities while they performed reading tasks. Another group of 27 good readers also was studied, the New York Times reported. Good readers used three areas in the left side of the brain, to decode letters into sounds, fit them together to make words and process them fluently. The readers who had compensated but still read slowly did not use the same brain regions for those tasks. Instead, they created an alternate neural pathway, reading mostly with regions on the right side of the brain -- areas not as well suited for reading, the researchers said.