Plastic neural changes and reading improvement caused by audiovisual training in reading-impaired children

This study aimed at determining whether audiovisual training without lingui stic material has a remediating effect on reading skills and central audito ry processing in dyslexic children. It was found that this training resulte d in plastic changes in the auditory cortex, indexed by enhanced electrophy siological mismatch negativity and faster reaction times to sound changes. Importantly, these changes were accompanied by improvement in reading skill s. The results indicate that reading difficulties can be ameliorated by spe cial training programs and, further, that the training effects can be obser ved in brain activity. Moreover, the fact that the present training effects were obtained by using a program including no linguistic material indicate s that dyslexia is at least partly based on a general auditory perceptual d eficit.