Neural Mechanisms of Successful Intervention in Children With Dyslexia

Dyslexia, an impairment in accurate or fluent word recognition, is the most common learning disability affecting roughly ten percent of children. This proposal capitalizes on cutting edge neuroimaging methods, in combination with reading education programs, to generate a new understanding of how successful reading education shapes the development of the brain circuits that support skilled reading. A deeper understanding of the mechanisms of successful remediation of dyslexia, and individual differences in learning, will pave the way for personalized approaches to dyslexia treatment.

Seeing Stars in a curriculum developed by Lindamood-Bell. It is published and openly available. It involves systematic training in the building blocks of skilled reading.

Change between baseline (within 2 weeks pre-intervention) and post-intervention (within 2 weeks post-intervention)

Inclusion Criteria: Reading difficulties defined as low scores on standardized measures of reading skills Exclusion Criteria: no major contraindication for MRI (braces, metal implants, pacemakers, vascular stents, or metallic ear tubes). Because the study involves measurements of reading and language ability, new recruits will be native English speakers. Subjects have no history of neurological disorder, significant psychiatric problems exclude claustrophobic subjects since an MRI might be uncomfortable for them.

All consent forms in the Yeatman lab contain a data sharing clause that allows de-identified data to be shared publicly. The lab policy is that data and analysis code are always publicly released to accompany each published manuscript from the lab. This policy ensures that published findings can be reproduced by other researchers and the general public. In our experience, this also creates a useful resource to document our methods, describe methodological decisions in greater detail than afforded by journal articles, and publicly release datasets that may be of utility to other researchers. Data and code are organized into a well-documented repository (see https://github.com/yeatmanlab) with a persistent digital identifier ensuring that it will be available in perpetuity. Within the repository is documentation to reproduce each manuscript figure and each reported statistic. The lab is a strong proponent of open science and has adhered to this lab policy for every published manuscript.