Impaired recognition of faces and objects in dyslexia: Evidence for ventral stream dysfunction?

Sigurdardottir, Heida Maria; Ívarsson, Eysteinn; Kristinsdóttir, Kristjana; Kristjánsson, Árni

doi:10.1037/neu0000188

Cited by 61 publications

(84 citation statements)

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“…Sigurdardottir et al, 2015). This suggests that, in dyslexia, the general capacity for perceptual processes to establish short-term representations of stimulus consistency may be impaired (Ahissar et al, 2006; Chandrasekaran et al, 2009; Hornickel and Kraus, 2013; Jaffe-Dax et al, 2015; Oganian and Ahissar, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dysfunction of Rapid Neural Adaptation in Dyslexia

Perrachione

Tufo

Winter

et al. 2016

Neuron

123

142

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Summary Identification of specific neurophysiological dysfunctions resulting in selective reading difficulty (dyslexia) has remained elusive. In addition to impaired reading development, individuals with dyslexia frequently exhibit behavioral deficits in perceptual adaptation. Here, we assessed neurophysiological adaptation to stimulus repetition in adults and children with dyslexia for a wide variety of stimuli – spoken words, written words, visual objects, and faces. For every stimulus type, individuals with dyslexia exhibited significantly diminished neural adaptation compared to controls in stimulus-specific cortical areas. Better reading skills in adults and children with dyslexia were associated with greater repetition-induced neural adaptation. These results highlight a dysfunction of rapid neural adaptation as a core neurophysiological difference in dyslexia that may underlie impaired reading development. Reduced neurophysiological adaptation may relate to prior reports of reduced behavioral adaptation in dyslexia, and may reveal a difference in brain functions that ultimately results in a specific reading impairment.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dysfunction of Rapid Neural Adaptation in Dyslexia

Perrachione

Tufo

Winter

et al. 2016

Neuron

123

142

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“…Their task involved visual statistical learning of relationships between complex visual objects (cartoon aliens), but as our previous research shows that reading problems are associated with poor recognition of such complex visual objects 51 , their finding may reflect suboptimal visual processing of the individual items themselves, but recognition of individual items was not tested. The rapid serial visual presentation used is also of some concern given reports that reading problems are associated with a processing deficit for rapidly presented stimuli 82 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, some of the tasks on which this conclusion is based, such as the detection of high-pass filtered rings 48 , detection of fixed sinewave gratings 49 , or the sensitivity to static visual form coherence 50 , might mainly tap into the workings of the lower portion of the ventral visual stream. We have previously demonstrated that people with dyslexia are impaired not only at recognizing visually presented words but also faces and other visually complex objects 51 . While we emphasize that this does not automatically argue against other theories of the causes of dyslexia, the possibility remains that reading problems in dyslexia might in some ways be a manifestation of a more general high-level visual deficit.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This, again, is consistent with the fact that particular regions in the ventral visual stream – thought to play a crucial role in the visual recognition of words and other complex objects – have consistently been shown to be hypoactive in both children and adults with dyslexia 52 (see ref. 51 for an extended discussion) and in prereading children with a familial risk for dyslexia 53 . The difficulties that dyslexic readers have with visual recognition presumably stem from these functional abnormalities, but what causes the functional abnormalities is unclear.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Problems with visual statistical learning in developmental dyslexia

Sigurdardottir

Daníelsdóttir

Guðmundsdóttir

et al. 2017

Sci Rep

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Previous research shows that dyslexic readers are impaired in their recognition of faces and other complex objects, and show hypoactivation in ventral visual stream regions that support word and object recognition. Responses of these brain regions are shaped by visual statistical learning. If such learning is compromised, people should be less sensitive to statistically likely feature combinations in words and other objects, and impaired visual word and object recognition should be expected. We therefore tested whether people with dyslexia showed diminished capability for visual statistical learning. Matched dyslexic and typical readers participated in tests of visual statistical learning of pairs of novel shapes that frequently appeared together. Dyslexic readers on average recognized fewer pairs than typical readers, indicating some problems with visual statistical learning. These group differences were not accounted for by differences in intelligence, ability to remember individual shapes, or spatial attention paid to the stimuli, but other attentional problems could play a mediating role. Deficiencies in visual statistical learning may in some cases prevent appropriate experience-driven shaping of neuronal responses in the ventral visual stream, hampering visual word and object recognition.

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“…Evidence for a concurrent impairment in face perception is provided by the finding that a well-characterized group of DD adults performed significantly more poorly compared with controls (Sigurdardottir, Ívarsson, Kristinsdóttir, & Kristjánsson, 2015) on the Cambridge Face Memory Test (Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006). Similarly, relative to controls, DD individuals matched faces more slowly, showed disproportionate cost in performance when target and distractor faces differed in viewpoint, and discriminated faces more poorly, particularly as the faces were increasingly alike perceptually (Gabay, Dundas, Plaut & Behrmann, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hemispheric organization in disorders of development

et al. 2017

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A recent theoretical account posits that, during the acquisition of word recognition in childhood, the pressure to couple visual and language representations in the left hemisphere (LH) results in competition with the LH representation of faces, which consequently become largely, albeit not exclusively, lateralized to the right hemisphere (RH). We explore predictions from this hypothesis using a hemifield behavioral paradigm with words and faces as stimuli, with concurrent ERP measurement, in a group of adults with developmental dyslexia (DD) or with congenital prosopagnosia (CP), and matched control participants. Behaviorally, the DD group exhibited clear deficits in both word and face processing relative to controls, while the CP group showed a specific deficit in face processing only. This pattern was mirrored in the ERP data too. The DD group evinced neither the normal ERP pattern of RH dominance for faces nor the LH dominance for words. In contrast, the CP group showed the typical ERP superiority for words in the LH but did not show the typical RH superiority for faces. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the typical hemispheric organization for words can develop in the absence of typical hemispheric organization for faces but not vice versa, supporting the account of interactive perceptual development.

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Impaired recognition of faces and objects in dyslexia: Evidence for ventral stream dysfunction?

Abstract: The difficulty that people with dyslexia experience with reading might be the most salient manifestation of a more general high-level visual deficit.

Cited by 61 publications

References 100 publications

Dysfunction of Rapid Neural Adaptation in Dyslexia

Dysfunction of Rapid Neural Adaptation in Dyslexia

Problems with visual statistical learning in developmental dyslexia

Hemispheric organization in disorders of development

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