Study suggests marker in the brain for reading problems

Dr. Guinevere Eden and Dr. Thomas Zeffiro, a husband and wife team and co-directors of the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown, also found that the right inferior parietal can be taught to compensate for the weakness in the left side of the brain through a program of intense reading training.

"These study results are further evidence that dyslexia has biological roots," said Eden. She and Zeffiro discussed their study Thursday at the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dyslexia is generally diagnosed in elementary school children who have great difficulty learning to read. The core of this difficulty, said Eden, is the inability to link up visual symbols with sounds, an essential process in reading.

A youngster with dyslexia, for instance, could not associate the sounds in the spoken word "cat" with the letters that make up the simple word, said Eden.

It is estimated that 5 percent to 15 percent of the population suffers from some degree of dyslexia, she said. Some learn to compensate, but Eden said many adults cannot read because the problem was not identified and treated during their school years.

Eden said the findings are important because they suggest it might eventually be possible to develop a test that would identify dyslexic children at a very early age.<