Developmental dyslexia is a specific reading disability that affects approximately 4-10% of the scholar population. It is defined as a reading difficulty despite adequate instruction and education, normal intellective capacities and social-cultural situation, not caused by reduced visual acuity or cognitive impairment. Over the last three decades many investigations found visuoperceptive abnormalities to be associated with this clinical condition, suggesting that even a visual impairment may play a causal role.

However, the nature of this deficiency is not clear, to date.

For some years I have been studying developmental dyslexia under a neuroophthalmological perspective. I have shown that defective spatial relationship perception with anomalous vertical anisotropy can be related to the reading disability. My findings, together to the growing body of literature on this topic, reinforces the idea that in dyslexic children not only a phonological deficiency but also an impairmen referred to higher order visual functions can be involved. 

Developmental dyslexia has been the main subject of my master's dissertation and part of my Ph.D dissertation. In 2000 my study titled “Spatial relationship perception in the dyslexic child: a novel reading key?" was awarded as  the  best research at the XXV meeting of the Northwestern Ophthalmological Society (SONO). The next year my general studies on this topic have been rewarded again in the monograph titled “Neuro-ophthalmology".

After some international publications and the birth of TETRA, a tool aimed at detecting visuoperception abnormalities in dyslexics,  in 2013 my book "Dyslexia: A Visual Approach" came to light, first in US, then in Italy.

Actually I am investigating how to rehabilitate dyslexic children with visuospatial alteretion by visual training.