Genome-wide linkage scan for loci of musical aptitude in Finnish families: evidence for a major locus at 4q22

K Pulli; K Karma; R Norio; P Sistonen; H H H Göring; I Järvelä

doi:10.1136/jmg.2007.056366

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Genome-wide linkage scan for loci of musical aptitude in Finnish families: evidence for a major locus at 4q22

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Re: dyslexia, music, and phonological awareness
Irma E Järvelä
Published on: 9 October 2008
dyslexia, music, and phonological awareness
Kate Gladstone
Published on: 3 October 2008

Published on: 9 October 2008
Re: dyslexia, music, and phonological awareness
- Irma E Järvelä
We thank Kate Gladstone for the interest towards our study and answer to the comments as following:
The statement that "an important predictor of dyslexia, phonological awareness, can be understood as poor auditory structuring ability applied to language" raises some questions for me. /1/ If dyslexia correlates with poor auditory structuring ability, it seems very strange that some alleles leading to dyslexia wo...
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We thank Kate Gladstone for the interest towards our study and answer to the comments as following:
The statement that "an important predictor of dyslexia, phonological awareness, can be understood as poor auditory structuring ability applied to language" raises some questions for me. /1/ If dyslexia correlates with poor auditory structuring ability, it seems very strange that some alleles leading to dyslexia would also lead to musical ability. One would generally assume that musical ability would involve making good (rather than poor) use of auditory information. This leads me to ask whether your research plans to find out what particular aspects of human auditory ability (in people with the music/dyslexia alleles) might enhance musical learning/performance while simultaneously worsening literacy learning/performance. We apologize that a very unfortunate error has indeed crept into the text during the writing/editing process. The sentence should be: "We have previously suggested that an important predictor of dyslexia, phonological awareness, can be understood as auditory structuring ability applied to language and have shown that a low score in KMT significantly predicts dyslexia". We want to clarify here that our quantitative phenotype is linked to the same microsatellite markers at chromosome 18q that have been shown to be linked to dyslexia (DYX6 locus). We can speculate that the phenotype in our study that has low points in auditory structuring ability is linked to this locus. /2/ Does the possession of phonological awareness indeed predict the possession of poor reading ability? From other research, I had always assumed that possessing phonological awareness went along with good (rather than poor) reading ability. We agree with this. Possessing phonological awareness goes along with good reading ability. /3/ Similarly, it seems strange to see phonological awareness (rather than its absence) described as "poor auditory structuring ability." Can you please clarify how the ability to isolate and sequence the successive sounds within a spoken word would constitute "poor" (rather than good) "auditory structuring ability"? See point /1/. No competing interests.
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Conflict of Interest:
None declared.
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Published on: 3 October 2008
dyslexia, music, and phonological awareness
- Kate Gladstone, special education professional
The statement that "an important predictor of dyslexia, phonological awareness, can be understood as poor auditory structuring ability applied to language" raises some questions for me.
/1/ If dyslexia correlates with poor auditory structuring ability, it seems very strange that some alleles leading to dyslexia would also lead to musical ability. One would generally assume that musical ability would involve m...
Show More

The statement that "an important predictor of dyslexia, phonological awareness, can be understood as poor auditory structuring ability applied to language" raises some questions for me.
/1/ If dyslexia correlates with poor auditory structuring ability, it seems very strange that some alleles leading to dyslexia would also lead to musical ability. One would generally assume that musical ability would involve making good (rather than poor) use of auditory information. This leads me to ask whether your research plans to find out what particular aspects of human auditory ability (in people with the music/dyslexia alleles) might enhance musical learning/performance while simultaneously worsening literacy learning/performance.
/2/ Does the possession of phonological awareness indeed predict the possession of poor reading ability? From other research, I had always assumed that possessing phonological awareness went along with good (rather than poor) reading ability.
/3/ Similarly, it seems strange to see phonological awareness (rather than its absence) described as "poor auditory structuring ability." Can you please clarify how the ability to isolate and sequence the successive sounds within a spoken word would constitute "poor" (rather than good) "auditory structuring ability"?
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Conflict of Interest:
None declared.
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