Cerebellar Developmental Delay. "Dyslexia is a disorder of the movement centres located in the cerebellum, which has many links with the inner ear. Difficulties with reading and writing are just one of the symptoms. Dr Levinson, an American doctor who has been treating patients by checking their inner ear function and prescribing multi-vitamins, herbs and fatty acids says: "Under the conventional view, dyslexics have problems with all sorts of higher brain functions like hearing, vision, timing and memory. But if that's the case dyslexics would be severely mentally impaired, whereas in fact they are often very bright. Normally the inner ear and the cerebellum fine-tune all the messages that are coming in and out of the brain. In dyslexia this process has broken down." Dr Levinson's prospects of being taken seriously have been dramatically improved as a result of work being done by professor Rod Nicolson, a psychologist at Sheffield University who has found that the cerebellum is underperforming in dyslexics (www.dyslexia-add.co.uk).

This theory is put into business by the controversial DDAT centres (Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and Attention Disorder Centre now, interestingly, renamed the Dore Achievement Centres), where the initial assessment costs £332. "Symptoms such as dyslexia are the result of a part of the brain, called the cerebellum, not performing to its full capacity. We have discovered that straightforward physical exercises that take a few minutes a day may develop the cerebellum and enable the brain to use its full power."