Bennett Shaywitz
Section of Neurology
Department of Pediatrics
bennett.shaywitz@yale.edu

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Research
My current research focuses on the functional organization of the brain both for reading and language and in ADHD. Our research group has begun to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to isolate the component cognitive processes in reading (orthographic, phonological, and lexical-semantic processing) in non-reading impaired individuals and in individuals with dyslexia. Most recently we have been able to isolate a neural locus for phonological processing, the core deficit in dyslexia.

Of particular interest were differences in brain activation during phonological processing in men compared to women: activation in men was lateralized to the left inferior frontal gyrus; in contrast, activation during this same task in women resulted in bilateral activation of this region. Studies in progress use fMRI to study the evolution of the component processes in reading in non-impaired and dyslexic children as well as the functional organization of the brain in ADHD during tasks tapping attentional processes.