Abstract
A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study during Japanese ‘kana’ readings
was performed on Japanese dyslexic children. Five dyslexic children (aged 9–12 years)
and five healthy children (aged 9–11 years) were investigated. The fMRI examination
was performed by getting these children to read sentences constructed from Japanese
phonograms, ‘kana’, compared with staring at meaningless figures as a control task.
All control subjects showed activation of the left middle temporal gyrus. In the dyslexic
children, the activation of the middle temporal gyrus was rather vague. However, other
distinctively activated regions were detected as follows: the bilateral occipital
cortex in two dyslexics, the inferior part of the frontal regions in two other dyslexics,
and both the bilateral occipital cortex and the inferior part of precentral gyrus
in the remaining one. These results indicate compensatory management processes for
the unskilled reading ability of dyslexic children. The present results were similar
to previous ones for adult dyslexia with the Roman alphabet, and suggest that brain
malfunction in dyslexia during the task of reading must be common despite differences
in languages.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
May 9,
2001
Received in revised form:
May 9,
2001
Received:
September 13,
2000
Identification
Copyright
© 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.