Dislexia, genetic or brain damage

[Guest leankiller]

While trying to do research for a bio/chem research paper on dislexia, i discovered there is very little imformation on it. So I was woundering if anyone knew something about it. From my own experiances with dislexia I have some idea of it, I beleive it is genetic because I think my mom has it and her dad has it and i have it, but we only have it very slightly, symtoms like difficulty with left and right and confusing p, q, d and b. I have a friend who also is dislexic but he sees letters upside down and has way more trouble reading than anybody in my family so i think that it may be co-dominate trait varying from DD normal, Dd slightly dislexic and dd total dislexia.

 

I also was wounder how the disease works, I think it has something to do with some fluid or enzime lacking in the brain making people effected by it think to fast or disorderly. I always catch myself talking to fast and trying to read to fast by reading the first few letters of a word eg) reading a word like communication and seeing comm and assuming its a word like commuting or a simalar word.

 

Mabey im way off or im close, I dont know, the only background I have in this is the grade 12 biology im currently in and my own experiances with it. So if I sound really stupid please be kind about it. Thanks for your help.

 

And if your worrying about my paper please dont, im doing it on advil now, so if you have any information on how it works please mail me.

 

Thank you!

[Ophiolite]

You may find these links are a good starting point. They are the home pages of organisations dealing with dsylexia. It seems that while dyslexia has a genetic component, it is also affected by environmental factors:

 

http://www.dyslexia-inst.org.uk/

http://www.interdys.org/

 

This one deals with the probable causes:

http://www.readingsuccesslab.com/BiologicalBasisForDyslexia.html

[Guest h2whoa]

Try this link:

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=search&term=Dyslexia

 

There's loads.

 

h2

[badchad]

What ophiolite said. More than likely it is a combination of genetic and environmental causes. Kind of like obesity, and other disorders like schizophrenia.

 

In determining genetic factors in diseases, twin studies are usually very helpful (for obvious reasons). I bet if you look at a twin study, the concordance rate for monozygotic twins is high, but not 100%.