CBBS-ScienceCampus

Project group 5 

The main goal of this research project is to investigate the potential supportive effects of transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) on impaired reading and writing skills in children and adolescent individuals suffering from developmental dyslexia (DD). DD is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is characterized by pathological impairments in the acquisition of reading and/or writing skills that are not accounted for by biological age, intelligence or inadequate schooling. Current therapeutic interventions lead to only limited success and, consequently, the impairment persists throughout life. Pathologically reduced reading and writing skills that characterize DD are generally assumed to be the result of severe deficits in low-level auditory processing that hinders the accurate perception of linguistically meaningful information units in the speech signal. This, in turn, impedes the individual’s ability to learn that individual letters or letter strings represent individual sounds, a skill that is essential in the process of reading and writing acquisition. Dysfunctional brain response patterns represent the neural correlate of diminished auditory processing abilities. Normalizing these maladaptive patterns is therefore a fundamental step to restore auditory processing and to facilitate the acquisition of higher order language skills essential for reading and writing.

In sum, this research project combines basic and applied science in the context of impaired auditory processing in DD aiming to evaluate tES as a potential adjuvant to conventional interventions in DD. In addition, the results will significantly enhance our knowledge on the functionality of the human auditory system.