Opinion

Dyslexia, development and the cerebellum

Discussion by Nicolson et al. on commentaries by Ivry and Justus, and Zeffiro and Eden

We concluded our target article with four general points.

• 1.

  A high proportion of dyslexic children show behavioural evidence of abnormal cerebellar function.

• 2.

  In a neuroimaging study of dyslexic adults, there was evidence of abnormal function largely specific to the cerebellum, both for learning and in ‘automatic’ performance.

• 3.

  The difficulties shown in skill automatization and in speech-related cognitive tasks are directly consistent with current conceptualizations of the role of the cerebellum.

• 4.

  We