There is some evidence for a role of music training in boosting phonological awareness, word segmentation, working memory, as well as reading abilities in children with typical development. Poor performance in tasks requiring temporal processing, rhythm perception and sensorimotor synchronization seems to be a crucial factor underlying dyslexia in children. Interestingly, children with dyslexia show deficits in temporal processing, both in language and in music. Within this framework, we test the hypothesis that music training, by improving temporal processing and rhythm abilities, improves phonological awareness and reading skills in children with dyslexia. The study is a prospective, multicenter, open randomized controlled trial, consisting of test, rehabilitation and re-test (ID NCT02316873). After rehabilitation, the music group (N = 24) performed better than the control group (N = 22) in tasks assessing rhythmic abilities, phonological awareness and reading skills. This is the first randomized control trial testing the effect of music training in enhancing phonological and reading abilities in children with dyslexia. The findings show that music training can modify reading and phonological abilities even when these skills are severely impaired. Through the enhancement of temporal processing and rhythmic skills, music might become an important tool in both remediation and early intervention programs.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT02316873

Rhythm organizes events in time and plays a major role in music, but also in the phonology and prosody of a language. Interestingly, children with developmental dyslexia—a learning disability that affects reading acquisition despite normal intelligence and adequate education—have a poor rhythmic perception. It has been suggested that an accurate perception of rhythmical/metrical structure, that requires accurate perception of rise time, may be critical for phonological development and subsequent literacy. This hypothesis is mostly based on results showing a high degree of correlation between phonological awareness and metrical skills, using a very specific metrical task. We present new findings from the analysis of a sample of 48 children with a diagnosis of dyslexia, without comorbidities. These children were assessed with neuropsychological tests, as well as specifically-devised psychoacoustic and musical tasks mostly testing temporal abilities. Associations were tested by multivariate analyses including data mining strategies, correlations and most importantly logistic regressions to understand to what extent the different auditory and musical skills can be a robust predictor of reading and phonological skills. Results show a strong link between several temporal skills and phonological and reading abilities. These findings are discussed in the framework of the neuroscience literature comparing music and language processing, with a particular interest in the links between rhythm processing in music and language.

Inferring relations between cognitive processes and postural control is a relatively topical challenge in developmental neurology. This study investigated the effect of a concurrent cognitive task on postural control in a sample of 50 nine-year-old children. Each subject completed two balance trials of 60 s, one with a concurrent cognitive task (cognitive load) and another with no cognitive load. The concurrent cognitive task consisted of mentally counting backwards in steps of 2. Twelve posturographic parameters (PPs) were extracted from the centre of pressure (CoP) trajectory obtained through a load cell force plate. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences in the majority of the extracted PPs. CoP was found to travel faster, farther, and with substantially different features demonstrating an overall broadening of the spectrum in the frequency domain. Nonlinear stability factors revealed significant differences when exposed to a concurrent cognitive task, showing an increase of instability in the intervention rate of the postural control system. By grouping children through selected items from Teachers Ratings and PANESS assessment, specific significant differences were also found both in time and frequency domain PPs, thus confirming the hypothesis of an interaction between cognitive processes (and their development), and postural control

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1 Mild stress plus mild pain (solvent injection) applied daily to neonatal mice induces hormonal, behavioural and metabolic changes perduring in the adult life. 2 We investigated whether daily mild stress to neonatal mice induces also long-term de®ned changes of immune response, and whether immune changes are prevented through repeated administration of the opioid antagonist naloxone. 3 Mild stress plus solvent injection administered from birth to the 21st postnatal day causes not only behavioural and metabolic changes, but also long-term (up to 110 days of life) splenocytes modi®cations, consisting in: increased release of the Th-1 type cytokines interleukin-2 (IL-2) (from an average of 346 to 788 pg ml 71 ), interferon-g (from 1770 to 3942) and tumour necrosis factor-a (from 760 to 1241); decreased release of the Th-2 type cytokines IL-4 (from 49.1 to 28.4) and IL-10 (from 1508 to 877). Moreover, enhanced natural killer-cell activity; enhanced proliferative splenocytes properties in resting conditions and following phytohemoagglutinin and concanavalin-A stimulation are observed. Immunological, behavioural and metabolic changes are prevented by the opioid antagonist (7)naloxone (1 mg kg 71 per day s.c., administered instead of solvent) but not by the biologically inactive enantiomorph (+)naloxone. 4 In conclusion, endogenous opioid systems sensitive to naloxone are involved in long-lasting enhancement of the Th-1 type cytokines and cell-mediated immunological response caused by repeated mild stress administered postnatally.

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Electroretinogram (ERG), widely used to study the pharmacological effects of drugs in animal models (e.g., diabetic retinopathy), is usually recorded in anesthetized rats. We report here a novel simple method to obtain chronic implantation of electrodes for simultaneous recording at the retinal and cortical levels in freely moving, unanesthetized animals. We recorded cortical (VEPs) and retinal (ERGs) responses evoked by light (flash) stimuli in awake rats and compared the results in the same rats anesthetized with urethane (0.6 mg/kg) before and after the monocular administration of scopolamine methyl bromide (1‰solution). We also compared the retinal responses with those derived from a classic acute corneal electrode. Anesthesia induced consistent changes of several VEP and ERG parameters like an increase of both latency and amplitude. In particular, the analysis of the variation of latency, amplitude, and spectral content of rapid oscillatory potentials could be important for a functional evaluation of the visual system in unanesthetized versus anesthetized animals.