Facilitation of the spinal H-reflex by auditory stimulation in dyslexic adults.
Dyslexic subjects show a variety of mild sensory and motor deficits that have been assumed to reflect dysfunction of the large-diameter 'magnocells' in different parts of the brain. Hearing as a warning sense relies on rapidly-conducting fibers, and on the basis of the magnocellular deficit theory, we wondered whether auditory alerting would be weakened in dyslexic adults. We quantified the strength of sound-induced spinal facilitation in seven dyslexic and eight normal-reading adults by measuring the amplitudes of H-reflex, a monosynaptic spinal reflex, after loud binaural sounds. The audiospinal facilitation was of similar strength in dyslexic and control adults, indicating normal auditory alerting via cerebrospinal pathways. The slightly prolonged facilitation in dyslexics agrees with the dyslexics' general sluggishness of sensorimotor processing.
Brain Research Unit, Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 2200, 02015 HUT, Espoo, Finland.
Katariina
K
Saarelma
Hanna
H
Renvall
Veikko
V
Jousmäki
Tero
T
Kovala
Riitta
R
Hari
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000150:complications* / Q000503:physiopathology; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D018482:Muscle, Skeletal; D012018:Reflex; D012678:Sensation Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D013116:Spinal Cord / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013979:Tibial Nerve