For children with reading disorders, new hope may be found in a drug already used to treat attention-defecit/hyperactivity disorder. Methylphenidate, sold under the brand name Ritalin, has been shown to increase brain activity in the basal ganglia, a deep-brain structure involved in cognition in behavior.
Keith Shafritz and associates at Duke University Medical Center used functional magnetic resonance imaging scans (fMRI) to record brain activity in 27 adolescent subjects with either ADHD or a reading disorder. After taking either methylphenidate or a placebo, subjects completed auditory or visual attention tasks, and differences in each of the group’s performance were compared.
Findings indicate that the basal ganglia of unmedicated adolescents were not as highly activated as those in medicated subjects, who had more blood flow to attention-related brain regions during the cognitive tasks. Thus, even though methylphenidate did not alter performance itself, results suggest that both ADHD and reading disorders result from disruptions in the brain’s attentional circuitry. In an issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Shafritz and his team conclude that by normalizing that activation, methylphenidate may help treat reading disorders as well as ADHD in adolescents.
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