DYSLEXIA

Imagine you are in class at a literature lesson and the teacher decides to have you all read a book together. Each student is required to read one paragraph.

You are there in class and you start to feel anxious, your breathing is laboured, your heart is in your throat and you are in a cold sweat, because you already know what is going to happen.

First you try to figure out when it will be your turn, so you can guess the paragraph you will have to read.

After you figure out your part you will start reading it all the while trying to follow the class reading thread.

Your turn finally comes and you begin to read with your eyes wide open as much as possible trying to read as best as you can.

Unfortunately, it does not go as you have imagined. Your reading is not fluent at all; you have stopped several times to repeat a word correctly more than once, in short you do not know how to read.

And mostly if you were asked the content of the reading you would have a hard time remembering it.

If this has ever happened to you are probably dyslexic, you are part of the 17% of the population.

Before we start I would like to explain what dyslexia is.

Dyslexia is part of the specific learning disorders: “Dyslexia is a learning disability in reading. People with dyslexia have trouble reading at a good pace and without mistakes. They may also have a hard time with reading comprehension, spelling, and writing. But these challenges aren’t a problem with intelligence.”

Many people who suffer from dyslexia often feel stupid.

Actually this is not the case because even Hans Albert Einstein, one of the most well-known scientists in the world who is called a real genius is another example is the famous writer Agatha Christie.

But how does a dyslexic person really see

Many times we are led to think that we have only one predominant arm, but that is not the case, because most people have one predominant eye.

So we see a slightly different image from both sides, pass the information to the brain, which processes it according to our eyes, which have different photoreceptors, including cones and rods. The former are responsible for colour perception. There are at least three types of cones-for red, green and blue-that are concentrated in the central area of the retina (the fovea).

And to a principle of symmetry.

However, there is a circumscribed area of 0.10–0.15 millimetres in diameter in which blue-sensitive cones are completely absent. This kind of “hole” is, in non-dyslexic people, circular in the dominant eye and irregularly shaped in the other eye. In people with dyslexia, this area is equally circular in both eyes, resulting in the absence of a dominant signal.

It is precisely the absence of asymmetry that could be at the origin of the stimuli that confuse the brain, which has to deal with “mirror” images (it is not for nothing that people with dyslexia often confuse b and d).

This disorder can create discomfort for people who suffer from it, for example, children who go to school.

Dyslexia in school environments can be an element of ridicule by both classmates and teachers. This is because, many times it is thought that the person who suffers from this disorder actually ,does not just want to study.

That is why much more information should be made about this disability, so that we can ensure an adequate quality of teaching and enhance the qualities of the student.

Dyslexia is not something limiting in fact dyslexic people have the ability to think outside the box.

This is one of the skills that is highly valued nowadays, in fact many companies like Nasa , who hire dyslexic people because they have above average problem solving skills and better 3D imagination.

In conclusion I would like to address dyslexic person , who have felt less and less compared to other people and have been told that they are not going anywhere ,

with this quote from Giacomo Cutrera :

“When they tell you that you will never be anybody, remember that this phrase has already been said even to the greats of history.”