Towards a Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) for Improving Phonological Processing in Developmental Dyslexia: An Exploratory Study

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have immense potential regarding the provision of therapies for disorders of development, but to date have typically been created for non-linguistic disorders such as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Here we present a BCI that aims to improve linguistic phonological processing in developmental dyslexia. Phonological deficits are considered a core feature of dyslexia across languages. A non-invasive EEG-BCI relying on auditory inputs and visual feedback was developed to optimise brain patterns related to phonology (speech-sound processing). These patterns were identified using Temporal Sampling (TS) theory, which proposes that phonological difficulties in dyslexia are related to impaired auditory processing of amplitude envelope rise times and low-frequency speech envelope information <10 Hz. These impairments are thought to affect automatic features of speech processing from birth, impairing the development of a phonological system. Adults with and without a diagnosis of developmental dyslexia played the BCI for 16 sessions, and received pre-and post-testing regarding phonological awareness and single word and nonword reading skills. Significant associations between their BCI scores (a measure of BCI learning) and improvements in syllable stress discrimination, nonword reading and amplitude rise time discrimination were found. The data are interpreted with respect to TS theory.