There is mounting evidence that dyslexics may display exceptional talents and that eating fish can possibly improve the condition, according to University of Oxford professor John Stein.
“Dyslexia is remarkably common – about 10 per cent of all children have difficulty learning to read, particularly boys,” he told Times of Malta.
“If you’ve got something which is very common, there’s usually a compensating advantage for it because dyslexia is hereditary and runs in families.
“The genes that are concerned would not remain in the genome if they were wholly bad, because bad genes don’t allow you to procreate. That’s why there’s a huge over-representation of dyslexics among artists and entrepreneurs in particular.”
Prof. Stein was brought to Malta by the University of Malta’s Department of Counselling to address a talk on neurology and a one-day seminar on dyslexia yesterday.
Prof. Stein explained that successful artists and entrepreneurs relied on a different form of thinking, which was distinct from normal linear thinking. Reading requires the ability to sequence letters and letter sounds in the right order. People are defined as dyslexic if they are statistically worse at this than normal readers.
Dyslexics, on the other hand, are particularly good at seeing the whole picture, at tracing patterns and mapping out connections between things which are not evident to others.
About 10 per cent of all children have difficulty learning to read, particularly boys
“These are all things which lead to artistic and entrepreneurial talent because if you can see things others don’t, you can dream up wonderful technology, for instance.
“The most famous example was Thomas Edison – who was dyslexic – who invented the light bulb, among other things.”
Prof. Stein is a proponent of the magnocellular theory of dyslexia. The magnocellular system is the dominant control over a person’s allocation of attention.
Magnocellular cells, Prof. Stein explains, are a special set of nerve cells in the brain that react very rapidly to sensory input but which are extremely vulnerable.
There’s a lot of evidence that dyslexics have an impaired development of this system.
When the magnocellular system is impaired, children’s ability to fixate on letters in words decreases and their eyes begin to wobble or oscillate, causing the letters to “dance around”.
“They need special help. The difficulty is that there is no agreement on what this help should be. The dominant theory in the field is the phonological theory, which says dyslexics have problems matching letters to sounds. But to me, that’s just restating the problem.”
Prof. Stein’s theory states that there’s a fundamental neurological weakness which can be addressed directly.
Half of dyslexics are predominantly visual dyslexics, meaning they find it hard to read words on the written page.
The other half suffer from a predominantly auditory magnocellular problem. Such children would have problems repeating words they hear.
The simplest way of helping visual dyslexics is to have them look through different coloured filters, mainly yellow, because the visual magnocellular system is most sensitive to longer wavelengths. Other dyslexics read better under blue filters.
Auditory dyslexics may be helped through being taught music and rhythm.
“If a dyslexic can survive their schooling – which can be a very horrible experience, as children can be branded as stupid or lazy – they can go on to be very successful. We need these talents to survive because linear thinking has got us into the banking crisis, global warming and so on.”
There are around 10 genes which are associated with dyslexia. One particular gene probably helps to control the metabolism of essential fatty acids, including omega-3s, Prof. Stein pointed out.
“Consuming fish oil could potentially help dyslexics. I must say that at this stage, this is still rather speculative, although we have shown that you can improve children’s reading by feeding them fish.”