Electroencephalographic coherences discriminate between children with different pedagogical evaluation

The relationship of reading-writing ability and EEG coherences was studied in 84 subjects from two age groups 7.0–8.9 and 9–11.2 years old. All children were divided into three groups according to their performance on a pedagogical test: ped1, normal children; ped2, children with mild problems; ped3, children with reading-writing disability. The following results were obtained: in general, children showed higher coherences in groups with poor performance in the delta, theta and beta bands. In the alpha band, higher coherence values were related to better performance. The exceptions to this general pattern were rare. Group ped2 had higher coherences in delta, theta and alpha bands than ped1 and ped3, in left temporal leads. In older children the same tendency was observed, but group differences in the theta, alpha and beta bands were few. In this age range, the significant group differences were almost all interhemispheric coherences. The discriminant analysis that classified subjects by their coherence values gave very good results, fact that demonstrates, that EEG coherence is a highly sensitive measurement indicating not only the existence of a reading-writing problem, but also the degree of its severity.