Aberrant activations associated with developmental dyslexia and READ1 deletion induced by visual/attentive tasks

Motivation: Developmental Dyslexia (DD) is a complex and heritable neurodevelopmental disorder with heterogeneous genotype-phenotype pathways. Goal(s): Utilise fMRI as a bridge between genetic factors (DD-candidate risk genes) and behavioral traits (proficiency in reading skills). Approach: A GLM was used to test for relationships between reading proficiency, genetic mutation, and neural activations of two visual-attentive tasks. Results: A genetic vulnerability to alterations in neural activation was found in the ventral attentive and salient networks during reading-related stimuli in subjects with poor reading proficiency. Impact: Functional MRI has shown to be a valuable mediator linking genotype to phenotype, possibly leading to the optimization of criteria to diagnose Developmental Dyslexia and the early identification of children with a genetically driven susceptibility.