Current Understanding of the Genetic Basis of Reading and Spelling Disability

Abstract

Dyslexia is a common developmental disorder of unknown etiology. Behavioral and biological studies of dyslexia are complicated by its phenotypic heterogeneity and the lack of uniformly applied diagnostic criteria. In the past 20 years, increasingly powerful genetic technologies and statistical methodologies have been applied to identify genomic locations for genes involved in this complex heterogeneous disorder. This article reviews studies addressing the genetic contributions to dyslexia.