The Role of Rodent Models in Dyslexia Research: Understanding the Brain, Sex Differences, Lateralization, and Behavior

Abstract

Developmental dyslexia, a reading disorder that piggybacks on some of the highest human cognitive functions, can be studied in animal models. This is because dyslexia can be decomposed into endophenotypes, some of which are present in one form or another in non-human animals, and because dyslexia has a developmental trajectory beginning at a time when the human being is not predominantly a cognitive being. In this chapter I provide four examples of animal research where insights about the pathophysiology of dyslexia can be obtained. The first one concerns cortical abnormalities initially reported in autopsied dyslexic brains and modeled in rodent brains. The second one models brain lateralization, considered to be abnormal in dyslexia, the role of cilia in somatic lateralization, and possible roles of dyslexia susceptibility genes in cilia structure and function. The third example considers sex differences in dyslexia and reports sex-differences in developmental plasticity in subcortical structures and in behavior in rodents after induction of cortical malformations. Finally, the fourth example deals with the dichotomy of cortical versus subcortical involvement in dyslexia by showing developmental interactions of cortical and subcortical structures in early cortical and genetic manipulations in rats and mice.