Pathological reading has neuropsychological, neurobiological, and linguistic characteristics which are causing research to be completed. Models have been created using this information and are being used in conjunction with behavior when it comes to brain injuries and how reading is affected.
Positron emission tomography, also known as PET and functional magnetic resonance imaging, also known as fMRI are helping in the identification process. It is especially used when reading sentences and individual words in normal situations, in dyslexic people, stroke driven dyslexia, older adults that are healthy, dementia people, posterior split brain patients, and traumatic brain injury patients. Limited research has been conducted when it comes to reading disorders in those patients that require rehabilitation from an injury.
Shaywitz et al discovered a way to study a patient recovering from a reading disorder. In this study a comparison was conducted between adults that may or may not have had dyslexia as a child and normal adults. In these studies they reviewed information on the neural activation network between these two groups of patients.
Another study was conducted using a completely different group of patients. This time they used college students that had normal controls and the other group consisted of students that were dyslexic in their younger years. They discovered when there was a reduction in the left hemisphere the students with dyslexia as a child had the posterior inferior temporal cortex visible.
Reading can be a problem after a traumatic brain injury has occurred and studies are showing the part that’s affected the most is the reading comprehension. In this particular study they discovered the non-aphasic disturbances were present which caused the reading problem. Processing the words being read and retaining this information have been compromised. This study shows that more than 50% of adults with a traumatic brain injury have blurred or double vision and visual field deficits.
Following these studies a technique was created to help with these visual concerns. These techniques have shown to work well with patients that have had a stroke that cause reading issues.
fMRI in those patients with a traumatic brain injury has not been studied so it’s not clear when it comes to stability. However normal controls in research examining after a reproduction of fMRI has occurred is showing variability in activation patterns is occurring after some time has passed but specific stimuli characteristics and activation tasks must be present.
Traumatic brain injuries can cause a number of problems and can take years to correct. These studies show reading problems can and do occur after this type of injury no matter what caused it to happen. These studies also show dyslexia can be a problem when a traumatic brain injury occurs. When a complete understanding is in place techniques can be used to correct this problem while treatment for the injury is being conducted.
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