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3 - The genetics of dyslexia: what is the phenotype?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

By
Albert M. Galaburda  and
Gordon F. Sherman
Edited by
Kurt W. Fischer ,
Jane Holmes Bernstein  and
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Albert M. Galaburda
Affiliation:
Emily Fisher Landau Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience Harvard Medical School; Chief of the Division of Behavioral Neurology Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Gordon F. Sherman
Affiliation:
Executive Director Newgrange School and Education Center in Princeton, NJ
Kurt W. Fischer
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Jane Holmes Bernstein
Affiliation:
The Children's Hospital, Boston
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
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Summary

Overview: Dyslexia has a genetic basis, but a major question is the developmental relation between genes and behaviors, especially complex, culturally mediated behaviors such as reading. Moreover, because the dyslexic behavioral and anatomical phenotypes are still debated, interpreting correlations between brain and behavior is difficult. Using research involving animal models, postmortem studies of dyslexics' brains, and genetic studies of dyslexics' families, Galaburda and Sherman attempt to isolate genotypes and phenotypes for dyslexia. The research illuminates genetic differences between dyslexics and normals, as well as the low-level cognitive, sensory, and perceptual correlates of these differences. The authors focus especially on the functional and anatomical implications of ectopias, small malformations of the cortex resulting from altered neuronal migration during fetal development. Certain kinds of ectopias have been associated with dyslexia and could represent a basic, genetically influenced abnormality that through development may relate to important characteristics of dyslexics.

The Editors

Attempts to relate specific genes to specific human cognitive functions have not revealed any genes that control cognitive behavior in humans. We do not know, for instance, what the genetic basis for language in humans is, and why it is, genetically speaking, that even our closest relative – the chimpanzee – does not have anything approximating human language, even though we share over 95 percent of our genes with this species. This state of affairs, after 150 years of neurological research on language, and nearly 50 years since the discovery of the genetic code, should not be surprising.

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Mind, Brain, and Education in Reading Disorders , pp. 37 - 58
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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