FRIDAY, Aug. 10 (HealthDay News) -- The learning disability
dyslexia is caused by a problem with signal processing involving
speech recognition in the brain, according to a new study.
Although they do not lack intelligence, people with dyslexia
have trouble reading, understanding and explaining individual
words or entire texts. Researchers in Germany found this is
because a part of their brain's thalamus -- called the "medial
geniculate body" -- does not process speech sounds correctly.
"This malfunction at a low level of language processing could
percolate through the entire system. This explains why the
symptoms of dyslexia are so varied," Begona Diaz, from the Max
Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in
Leipzig, said in an institute news release. The researchers
conducted two experiments. First, participants were asked to
perform speech-comprehension tasks. Using magnetic resonance
tomography, the researchers found abnormal brain responses
during tasks that required the recognition of sp