
This means, when they read a word, it takes a longer trip through their brain and can get delayed in the frontal lobe. fMRI studies have found that the brains of those with dyslexia rely more on the right hemisphere and frontal lobe than the brains of those without it. The left hemisphere is generally in charge of language and, ultimately, reading, while the right typically handles spatial activities. The brain is divided into two hemispheres. So, here's the special way the brains of those with dyslexia work. Neurodiversity is the idea that because all our brains show differences in structure and function, we shouldn't be so quick to label every deviation from "the norm" as a pathological disorder or dismiss people living with these variations as "defective." People with neurobiological variations like dyslexia, including such creative and inventive individuals as Picasso, Muhammad Ali, Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Spielberg, and Cher, clearly have every capacity to be brilliant and successful in life. The continuum and distribution of dyslexia suggests a broader principle to bear in mind as we look at how the brains of those with dyslexia process language. It's common to see one family member who has trouble spelling while another family member has severe difficulty decoding even one syllable words, like catch. One person might have mild dyslexia while the next person has a profound case of it. Dyslexia affects up to one in five people. These difficulties are more widespread and varied than commonly imagined. Spelling words phonetically, like s-t-i-k for stick and f-r-e-n-s for friends is also common. Time spent decoding makes it hard to keep up with peers and gain sufficient comprehension. Given a word in isolation, like fantastic, students with dyslexia need to break the word into parts to read it: fan, tas, tic. This can be difficult for those with dyslexia. For example, if you heard the word cat and then someone asked you, "Remove the 'c'," what word would you have left? At. Dyslexia is caused by a phonological processing problem, meaning people affected by it have trouble not with seeing language but with manipulating it. The truth is people with dyslexia see things the same way as everyone else. When most people think of dyslexia, they think of seeing letters and words backwards, like seeing "b" as "d" and vice versa, or they might think people with dyslexia see "saw" as "was". Those with dyslexia experience that laborious pace every time they read. How was that? Frustrating? Slow? What were those sentences about? They're actually a simulation of the experience of dyslexia, designed to make you decode each word.
