We have watched a video of Le Floch and Ropars on a hypothesis of the origin of dyslexia and we wish to share it with you. Before presenting their discovery, we’ll remind you the notion of dyslexia. Dyslexia is a “proven, durable, unexpected reading acquisition disorder that occurs in an intelligent child, under “normal” learning conditions, without sensory, psychiatric or neurological pathology” (Billard & Delteil-Pinton, 2010). This disorder affects 5% of the school population with a higher prevalence for boys (Soares-Boucaud, Cheynel-Alberola & Georgieff, 2007).
There are three categories of dyslexia : phonological, surface and mixed dyslexia which are differentiated by the pathway affected during accessing reading.
- First, phonological dyslexia, which is the most common (70% of dyslexics), is the consequence of a malfunction of the “assembly pathway”. This one leads to a confusion between the sounds, a difficulty to make the relation between sounds and letters and an impediment to read sequences of syllables or words without meaning.
- Second, surface dyslexia (10% of dyslexics) is due to an impairment of the “addressing pathway” that causes a lack of the visual form recognition of the word, inhibiting the automation of reading and resulting in difficulties to store irregular words in the lexicon. As a result, the child reads more slowly.
- Finally, both pathways can be affected (“assembly pathway” and “addressing pathway”). In this case, it is a mixed dyslexia (20% of dyslexics).
In addition, several hypotheses have been drawn up about the origin of dyslexia : biological, environmental, cerebral, genetic, … Among these, two physicists have recently made a new discovery that could explain dyslexia. Le Floch and Ropars propose the hypothesis that dyslexia is due to ocular symmetry. To arrive at this discovery, they observed Maxwell’s tasks in each eye. These tasks are composed of centroids that are tiny receptors that capture light. Simply, in dyslexic individuals, Maxwell’s tasks would be too identical. This would prevent dyslexics to distinguish certain letters between them (e.g. the “p” and the “b” which are two close letters). Let’s give you some precisions. For people not dyslexic, the task of the directing eye is circular ; the task of the other eye is more crushed. Each task gives an image of what the person sees. One image will be stored by the brain, the other will be a ghost image, that the brain will not take into account. But, for dyslexics, these areas are symmetrical ; the tasks are both circular. They produce the same image in mirror, and the brain, deprived of a directing eye, does not know which one to choose.
According to this discovery, they propose an innovative method to overcome dyslexia through the play of light.
If you want more information about their discovery, we encourage you to watch their video : https://www.ouest-france.fr/bretagne/rennes-35000/des-physiciens-de-rennes-1-ont-perce-le-mystere-de-la-dyslexie-5318989
Words we have learned :
- Dyslexia (dyslexie)
- Pathway (voie, mécanisme, processus)
- Malfunction (dysfonctionnement)
- Lexicon (lexique)
- Impairment (détérioration)
Maurane BLOTTIERE, Amandine CHARRIER, Tiphaine FRANÇOIS