Neural Noise Hypothesis of Developmental Dyslexia

Roeland Hancock; Kenneth R Pugh; Fumiko Hoeft

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2017.03.008

Neural Noise Hypothesis of Developmental Dyslexia

Trends Cogn Sci. 2017 Jun;21(6):434-448. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2017.03.008. Epub 2017 Apr 8.

Authors

Roeland Hancock¹, Kenneth R Pugh², Fumiko Hoeft³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry and Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), 401 Parnassus Ave. Box-0984, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Science-based Innovation in Learning Center (SILC), 401 Parnassus Ave. Box-0984, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA. Electronic address: roeland.hancock@ucsf.edu.
² Haskins Laboratories, 300 George Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA; Department of Linguistics, Yale University, 370 Temple Street, New Haven, CT 06520, USA; Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Yale University, 330 Cedar Street, New Haven, CT 06520, USA; Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, 406 Babbidge Road, Storrs, CT 06269, USA.
³ Department of Psychiatry and Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), 401 Parnassus Ave. Box-0984, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Haskins Laboratories, 300 George Street, New Haven, CT 06511, USA; Department of Neuropsychiatry, Keio University School of Medicine, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160, Japan; Science-based Innovation in Learning Center (SILC), 401 Parnassus Ave. Box-0984, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; Dyslexia Center, UCSF, 675 Nelson Rising Lane, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA. Electronic address: fumiko.hoeft@ucsf.edu.

Abstract

Developmental dyslexia (decoding-based reading disorder; RD) is a complex trait with multifactorial origins at the genetic, neural, and cognitive levels. There is evidence that low-level sensory-processing deficits precede and underlie phonological problems, which are one of the best-documented aspects of RD. RD is also associated with impairments in integrating visual symbols with their corresponding speech sounds. Although causal relationships between sensory processing, print-speech integration, and fluent reading, and their neural bases are debated, these processes all require precise timing mechanisms across distributed brain networks. Neural excitability and neural noise are fundamental to these timing mechanisms. Here, we propose that neural noise stemming from increased neural excitability in cortical networks implicated in reading is one key distal contributor to RD.

Keywords: excitability; glutamate; neural oscillation; neurogenetics; reading.

Publication types

Review

MeSH terms

Auditory Perception
Auditory Perceptual Disorders
Dyslexia / etiology
Dyslexia / physiopathology*
Dyslexia / psychology
Humans
Noise
Phonetics*
Reading*
Speech Perception

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

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