For the past few months I’ve been re-watching episodes of Heroes, and the dyslexic, mind-reading policeman character got me to wondering: Do Chinese people suffer from dyslexia while reading Chinese ideograms? Tuesday’s Taiwan News featured a story which reminded me of my question, and answered it for me. Yes, it appears that they do.
Chinese- and English-speaking dyslexics have different neurological deficits, according to a study released yesterday which suggests that dyslexia may be different brain disorders in the two cultures.
English speakers with the reading disability typically have functional abnormalities in posterior parts of the brain associated with reading and possibly less gray matter in these areas also.
In Chinese dyslexics, on the other hand, the functional and structural brain abnormalities related to reading correspond with the left middle frontal region of the brain, according to new research.
(Embarrassed to say I didn’t Google the question – if I had, I would have come across this interesting 2005 column on the subject.)