The most prevalent learning disability is reading disability, a specific difficulty in learning to read, interpret, and manipulate written words, also known as dyslexia. Learning disabilities are a type of neurodevelopmental disorders that impede the acquisition, retention, or application of verbal or non-verbal information, affecting a person's ability to use specific cognitive skills ( 1, 2). We developed a novel neuroeducational approach to bridge the corresponding concepts on learning disabilities in the two disciplinary fields. Furthermore, the identification and development of comorbid learning disabilities, while a prevalent topic in psychoeducational literature, remains relatively understudied in neuroscience a testable model of the neuroanatomical substrates of comorbidity is greatly needed. Consequently, each field has produced different concepts and theories over time, leading to a sort of disconnect between the identification of learning disabilities in educational settings and the identification of learning disabilities based on neuroscientific evidence, respectively. Researchers in these two fields often measure similar constructs but use differing approaches to work with individuals with learning disabilities. The classification, diagnosis, and treatment of learning disabilities are important topics of research in both psychoeducational and neuroscience literature. The present neuroeducational approach bridges a long-standing transdisciplinary divide and contributes a step further toward improved early prediction, teaching and interventions for children and adults with combined reading and math disabilities. In our resulting “probing” model, the complex set of domain-specific and domain-general impairments shown in the comorbidity of reading and mathematical disabilities are hypothesized as being related to atypical development of the left angular gyrus. Through a systematic exhaustive review of clinical neuroimaging literature, we mapped the resulting cognitive profiles to correspondingly plausible neuroanatomical substrates of dyslexia and dyscalculia.
These findings were independent of gender, age, or socioeconomic and demographic factors. However, other deficits related to verbal working memory and semantic memory were exclusive to the MDRD group. The former group also exhibited deficits in quantitative reasoning like those shown by the MD group. As expected, the MDRD group exhibited reading deficits like those shown by the RD group.
We assessed the cognitive profiles of 360 individuals (mean age 25.79 ± 13.65) with disability in reading alone (RD group), mathematics alone (MD group) and both (comorbidity: MDRD group), with tests widely used in both psychoeducational and neuropsychological batteries. We bridge two analogous concepts of comorbidity, dyslexia-dyscalculia and reading-mathematical disabilities, in neuroscience and education, respectively.