An analysis of EEG signal power spectrum density generated during writing in children with dyslexia

Abstract

Power spectral density is one of the possible feature extraction methods to identify differences in the brain electrophysiological processing in children with dyslexia. Known to be a neurological disorder, dyslexia causes learning deficiencies mostly related to reading, although research has shown that writing problems also poses significant challenge and is a good indicator to identify a child to be dyslexic. This research looks into the analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) signal power spectrum density (PSD) during resting and writing activities of a poor dyslexic and capable dyslexic children. Activities include writing of known words based on cues from a computer. Eight electrodes position were localized that are based on pathway known for reading and writing, which are C3, C4, P3, P4, T7, T8, FC5 and FC6, where location of the right hemisphere were mirrored. Analysis showed that the PSD of the frontal right hemispheric locations in capable dyslexic children is significantly higher if compared to the left while poor dyslexics showed higher results in areas to the left. This can be viewed as the brain is compensating its left deficiencies with creating a new pathway that involved areas of the frontal right hemisphere.