Impaired parvocellular pathway in dyslexic children

Recent studies report that some children with dyslexia have impaired visual processing, specifically in the fast-processing magnocellular pathway. The objective was to study the effect of varying luminance and temporal and spatial frequency on the latency and amplitude of the visual evoked potentials (VEPs) in normal and dyslexic Egyptian children who speak Arabic (a right-left reading and writing system). VEPs were recorded in 52 dyslexic and 41 normal children in the fourth grade using a black and white checkerboard pattern with different checkerboard sizes and different rates of stimuli at high- and low-contrast media. The peak of the major positive wave component (P100) of each waveform and the trough of the previous major negative wave component were identified, and the peak-to-trough amplitude was measured. The latency and amplitude of VEPs in response to different experimental conditions showed significant shortening of P100 latency under high-contrast media and under low spatial frequency in children with dyslexia compared with normal readers. Furthermore, dyslexia children showed prolonged P100 latency in response to high spatial frequency stimulation compared with the low spatial frequency (P=0.003) and significantly higher N1-P1 amplitude under high-contrast media compared with low-contrast media (P=0.02), whilst no such changes were observed in normal readers. These results are suggestive of deficiency within the parvocellular pathway rather than the magnocellular pathway. As reading apparently places demands primarily on the ability to discriminate fine details, which is to say, on the parvocellular system, we suggested that deficiency in this system, at least in Arabic speaking children, could be a predisposing factor in dyslexia.