ANOMALOUS ELECTRICAL BRAIN RESPONSES IN CHILDREN WITH LEARNING PROBLEMS

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This chapter focuses on anomalous electrical brain responses in children with learning problems. Interparietal synchrony of response characterises the visual evoked potentials (VEP) of normal children but asynchronies occur in about half of the problem readers' responses. Asynchrony is much more common, however, in interparietal auditory evoked potentials (AEP) of normal children to pure tone stimulation; paradoxically, the AEP of problem readers between parietal sites is more frequently synchronous. Thus, taken in relation to the criterion group, an apparently irregular feature may represent the norm of response. Phase shifts ranging from minor latency differences to full phase reversal are commonly found in the VEP of dyslexic children. The chapter illustrates such a strong phase shift between parietal sites to pattern reversal stimulation. Moreover, shifts representing latency differences have been found in some of the dyslexic children. If there is an optimal period of time for feedback between hemispheres to be effective in relation to information processing as represented by sequential EP components, it is conceivable that such phase shifts may result in functional disturbances affecting perception and iconic memory storage.