Dyslexia could one day be diagnosed with a brain scan BEFORE a child is even old enough to read Currently, dyslexia is usually diagnosed when children are about six or seven, by which time they may already have fallen behind at school Researchers have discovered that there is a correlation between poor reading skills and the size of a child's brain's language processing area This finding could help them diagnose dyslexia earlier so that children do not ever start to struggle Dyslexia could be diagnosed using a brain scan before a child is even old enough to read Dyslexia could be diagnosed using a brain scan before a child is even old enough to read, according to a new study. Currently, dyslexia is usually diagnosed when children are about six or seven-years-old, by which time they may already have fallen behind at school. Researchers at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, worked with Boston Children's Hospital and discovered that there is a correlation between poor reading skills and the size of a child's brain's language processing area. Previous studies have shown that in adults with poor reading skills, this structure, known as the arcuate fasciculus, is smaller and less well organised than in adults who read normally. However, it was unknown if these differences cause reading difficulties or resulted from a lack of reading experience. "We were very interested in looking at children prior to reading instruction and whether you would see these kinds of differences," said Professor John Gabrieli a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research. The researchers carried out brain scans on 40 children aged four and five after assessing their pre-reading skills - this included looking at whether they could put words together from sounds. These brain scans revealed the size and organisation of the brain's white matter - bundles of nerves that carry information between brain regions. The researchers focused on three white matter tracts associated with reading skill, all located on the left side of the brain - the arcuate fasciculus, the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF). When comparing the brain scans and the results of several different types of pre-reading tests, the researchers found a correlation between the size and organisation of the arcuate fasciculus and performance on tests. The left arcuate fasciculus connects Broca's area, which is involved in speech production, and Wernicke's area, which is involved in understanding written and spoken language. A larger and more organised arcuate fasciculus could aid in communication between those two regions, the researchers say. Professor Gabrieli points out that the structural differences found in the study do not necessarily reflect genetic differences - environmental influences could also be involved. Currently, dyslexia is usually diagnosed when children are about six or seven-years-old, by which time they may already have fallen behind at school "At the moment when the children arrive at kindergarten, which is approximately when we scan them, we don't know what factors lead to these brain differences," he says. We don't know yet how it plays out over time, and that's the big question - can we, through a combination of behavioural and brain measures, get a lot more accurate at seeing who will become a dyslexic child, with the hope that that would motivate aggressive interventions that would help these children right from the start, instead of waiting for them to fail? Currently dyslexia is diagnosed by asking children to take a series of tests which assess their reading and writing ability, their memory, logical reasoning and their organisation skills.