FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVITY OF THE ANGULAR GYRUS IN NORMAL READING AND DYSLEXIA

The classic neurologic model for reading, based on studies of patients with acquired alexia, hypothesizes functional linkages between the an gular gyrus in the left hemisphere and visual association areas in the occipital and temporal lobes, The angular gyrus also is thought to ha ve functional links with posterior language areas (e,g,, Wernicke's ar ea), because it is presumed to be involved in mapping visually present ed inputs onto linguistic representations. Using positron emission tom ography,we demonstrate in normal men that regional cerebral blood flow in the left angular gyrus shows strong within-task, across-subjects c orrelations (i,e., functional connectivity) with regional cerebral blo od flow in extrastriate occipital and temporal lobe regions during sin gle word reading. In contrast, the left angular gyrus is functionally disconnected from these regions in men with persistent developmental d yslexia, suggesting that the anatomical disconnection of the left angu lar gyrus from other brain regions that are part of the ''normal'' bra in reading network in many cases of acquired alexia is mirrored by its functional disconnection in developmental dyslexia.