Comorbidity and cognitive overlap between developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia.
This study investigated whether there is a co-occurrence between developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia in adults. First, a database of online musical tests on 18,000 participants was analysed. Self-reported dyslexic participants performed significantly lower on melodic skills than matched controls, suggesting a possible link between reading and musical disorders. In order to test this relationship more directly, we evaluated 20 participants diagnosed with dyslexia, 16 participants diagnosed with amusia, and their matched controls, with a whole battery of literacy (reading, fluency, spelling), phonological (verbal working memory, phonological awareness) and musical tests (melody, rhythm and metre perception, incidental memory). Amusia was diagnosed in six (30%) dyslexic participants and reading difficulties were found in four (25%) amusic participants. Thus, the results point to a moderate comorbidity between amusia and dyslexia. Further research will be needed to determine what factors at the neural and/or cognitive levels are responsible for this co-occurrence.
['Couvignou|Manon|M|0000-0002-6652-5286', 'Peretz|Isabelle|I|0000-0003-3572-0262', 'Ramus|Franck|F|0000-0002-1122-5913']
D000293:Adolescent D000328:Adult D000368:Aged D001308:Auditory Perceptual Disorders D003071:Cognition D015897:Comorbidity D004410:Dyslexia D005260:Female D006801:Humans D008037:Linguistics D008297:Male D008570:Memory, Short-Term D008875:Middle Aged D009146:Music D011932:Reading D057566:Self Report D055815:Young Adult
Developmental dyslexia congenital amusia literacy phonology music perception