Atypical delta-band phase consistency and atypical preferred phase in children with dyslexia during neural entrainment to rhythmic audio-visual speech

According to the sensory-neural Temporal Sampling theory of developmental dyslexia, neural sampling of auditory information at slow rates (<10 Hz, related to speech rhythm) is atypical in dyslexic individuals, particularly in the delta band (0.5–4 Hz). Here we examine the underlying neural mechanisms related to atypical sampling using a simple repetitive speech paradigm. Fifty-one children (21 control children [15M, 6F] and 30 children with dyslexia [16M, 14F]) aged 9 years with or without developmental dyslexia watched and listened as a ‘talking head’ repeated the syllable “ba” every 500 ms, while EEG was recorded. Occasionally a syllable was “out of time”, with a temporal delay calibrated individually and adaptively for each child so that it was detected around 79.4% of the time by a button press. Phase consistency in the delta (rate of stimulus delivery), theta (speech-related) and alpha (control) bands was evaluated for each child and each group. Significant phase consistency was found for both groups in the delta and theta bands, demonstrating neural entrainment, but not the alpha band. However, the children with dyslexia showed a different preferred phase and significantly reduced phase consistency compared to control children, in the delta band only. Analysis of pre- and post-stimulus angular velocity of group preferred phases revealed that the children in the dyslexic group showed an atypical response in the delta band only. The delta-band pre-stimulus angular velocity (−130 ms to 0 ms) for the dyslexic group appeared to be significantly faster compared to the control group. It is concluded that neural responding to simple beat-based stimuli may provide a unique neural marker of developmental dyslexia. The automatic nature of this neural response may enable new tools for diagnosis, as well as opening new avenues for remediation.