Nerves may be the key to unlocking some problems of dyslexia. Long tracts of unorganized nerves, that meander like a road in a Grant Wood painting, seem to cause some forms of dyslexia. The Boston-based study used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to study the brains of 10 people with periventricular nodular heterotopia.
PNH is a genetic disorder that mucks up the structure of the brain, causing sufferers to read at a slower rate. Their intelligence is unaffected by the disorder, but a PNH-burdened brain cannot quickly process the written word.
The MRI scans revealed that PNH sufferers' white matter had been jumbled. White matter is like phone lines in the brain. The white matter is supposed to carry bits of information to the various operators, (the gray matter) but because the white matter is all muddled like a several piles of garden hoses, the signals are scrambled and hard to understand.
Doctors hope to use this research to treat children and adults with dyslexia. Plumbers will also use this information, but in a way that the uninitiated will never understand.
Einstein and Da Vinci were dyslexics and so is the Fonz, Henry Winkler. It seems like all the best people were dyslexic.
To get medical help for dyslexia, click here. To find all sorts of help, click here.
