SCIENCE
Research sheds light on dyslexia
October 19, 2017 - French scientists may have found a physiological cause for dyslexia hidden in the photoreceptor cells in the human eye. The learning difficulty affects one in 10 of the world’s population.
Like being left- or right-handed, most people have one dominant eye, the cells in this eye send priority visual information to the brain.
In people with the reading disability, the cells are arranged in matching patterns in both eyes, which may be to blame for confusing the brain by producing slightly different images, co-authors Albert Le Floch and Guy Ropars wrote in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“The lack of asymmetry might be the biological and anatomical basis of reading and spelling disabilities,” the study’s authors said.
They added: “For dyslexic students their two eyes are equivalent, and their brain has to successively rely on the two slightly different versions of a given visual scene.”