Wai Ting Siok, Zhendong Niu§, Zhen Jin, Charles A. Perfetti, and Li Hai Tan

Department of Linguistics and State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong; College of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China; Beijing 306 Hospital, Beijing 100101, China; and ||Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260

Communicated by Robert Desimone, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, February 25, 2008 (received for review January 1, 2008)

Developmental dyslexia is a neurobiologically based disorder that affects {approx}5–17% of school children and is characterized by a severe impairment in reading skill acquisition. For readers of alphabetic (e.g., English) languages, recent neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that dyslexia is associated with weak reading-related activity in left temporoparietal and occipitotemporal regions, and this activity difference may reflect reductions in gray matter volume in these areas.