Dyslexic brain may solve some math problems in a roundabout way
Children with the reading disorder rely heavily on right brain to do addition
The brains of children with dyslexia rely on unusual strategies to solve certain kinds of math problems, researchers report in the Nov. 1 NeuroImage. The findings could explain why dyslexia, a disorder of reading, can bring math troubles too.
By revealing how the dyslexic brain tackles math, the research might eventually lead to better teaching methods, says study coauthor Guinevere Eden of Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Usually, people use regions on the right side of the brain to solve math problems that require a step-by-step process, such as subtraction and division; regions on the left side of the brain typically handle more rote, fact-retrieval problems such as addition and multiplication.