Altered connectivity of the dorsal and ventral visual regions in dyslexic children: a resting-state fMRI study.

While there is emerging evidence from behavioral studies that visual attention skills are impaired in dyslexia, the corresponding neural mechanism (i.e., deficits in the dorsal visual region) needs further investigation. We used resting-state fMRI to explore the functional connectivity (FC) patterns of the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the visual word form area (VWFA) in dyslexic children (N = 21, age mean = 12) and age-matched controls (N = 26, age mean = 12). The results showed that the left IPS and the VWFA were functionally connected to each other in both groups and that both were functionally connected to left middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Importantly, we observed significant group differences in FC between the left IPS and the left MFG and between the VWFA and the left MFG. In addition, the strengths of the identified FCs were significantly correlated with the score of fluent reading, which required obvious eye movement and visual attention processing, but not with the lexical decision score. We conclude that dyslexics have deficits in the network composed of the prefrontal, dorsal visual and ventral visual regions and may have a lack of modulation from the left MFG to the dorsal and ventral visual regions.

Attentional blink in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Objective: To explore the temporal mechanism of attention in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and controls using a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task in which two letters (T1 and T2) were presented in close temporal proximity among distractors (attentional blink [AB]). Method: Thirty children aged between 9 and 13 years (12 with ADHD combined type and 18 controls) took part in the study. Both groups performed two kinds of RSVP task. In the single task, participants simply had to identify a target letter (T1), whereas in the dual task, they had to identify a target letter (T1) and a probe letter (T2). Results: The ADHD and control groups were equivalent in their single-task performance. However, in the dual-task condition, there were significant between-group differences in the rate of detection of the probe letter (T2) at lag + 1 and lag + 4. The ADHD group exhibited a larger overall AB compared with controls. Conclusion: Our findings provide support for a link between ADHD and attentional blink. .