Vertical saccades in dyslexic children

•Dyslexic children perform longer latencies, more anticipatory and express saccades than non dyslexics.•An up–down asymmetry, known in non dyslexic children, was reported in dyslexics.•We suggest the impairement in cortical areas in dyslexic children.•A visuo-attentionnal bias could explain up–down asymetry reported for the vertical saccades triggering.•The orthoptic training was proposed to improve vertical saccades in dyslexic children. Vertical saccades have never been studied in dyslexic children. We examined vertical visually guided saccades in fifty-six dyslexic children (mean age: 10.5±2.56 years old) and fifty-six age matched non dyslexic children (mean age: 10.3±1.74 years old). Binocular eye movements were recorded using an infrared video-oculography system (mobileEBT®, e(ye)BRAIN). Dyslexic children showed significantly longer latency than the non dyslexic group, also the occurrence of anticipatory and express saccades was more important in dyslexic than in non dyslexic children. The gain and the mean velocity values were significantly smaller in dyslexic than in non dyslexic children. Finally, the up–down asymmetry reported in normal population for the gain and the velocity of vertical saccades was observed in dyslexic children and interestingly, dyslexic children also reported an up–down asymmetry for the mean latency. Taken together all these findings suggested impairment in cortical areas responsible of vertical saccades performance and also at peripheral level of the extra-ocular oblique muscles; moreover, a visuo-attentionnal bias could explain the up–down asymmetry reported for the vertical saccade triggering.