Dyslexia Doesn’t Work the Way We Thought It Did

Dyslexia Doesn’t Work the Way We Thought It Did

Anna Nowogrodzki

Studies find it’s the quick loss of recent implicit memory that is holding the brain back.

Dyslexia is not just about reading, or even language. It’s about something more fundamental: How much can the brain adapt to what it has just observed? People with dyslexia typically have less brain plasticity than those without dyslexia, two studies have found.

Though the studies measured people’s brain activity in two different ways and while performing different tasks, researchers at the Hebrew University of Israel, reporting in eLife, and researchers from MIT, reporting in Neuron, both found that dyslexics’ brains did not adapt as much to repeated stimuli, including spoken words, musical notes, and faces.

Both sets of researchers found that people with dyslexia more quickly forget recent events. This type of memory is called incidental or implicit memory, and includes anything you didn't know you needed to remember when it happened. Because of how quickly their implicit memory fades, dyslexics' brains don't adapt as much after reading or hearing something repeatedly—which is perhaps why it is harder for their brains to process the words they read.