Tracy Centanni University of Florida

Tracy Centanni

Associate Professor

tracy.centanni@phhp.ufl.edu 357-294-8675
  • Gainesville FL UNITED STATES
  • College of Public Health and Health Professions

Tracy Centanni studies the neural and genetic correlates of reading acquisition, risk factors for dyslexia, and neural plasticity.

Contact More Open options

Biography

Tracy Centanni is an associate professor and the director of the Genetics of Auditory and Visual Perception and Plasticity (GAPP) Lab. The lab's research program aims to understand the biological (gene and brain) and environmental (early childhood experiences) influences on reading development, focusing on dyslexia. A second branch of the lab focuses on non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation as a vehicle for improving language and reading abilities in a variety of populations, including understanding the conditions under which this approach is successful and how it changes the brain. Her lab studies are designed to bridge the gap between lab-based research and real-world applications to the populations we study.

Areas of Expertise

Neural Plasticity
Dyslexia
Auditory and Visual Perception
Brain Basis of Reading Acquisition
Genetic Factors for Dyslexia
Non-Invasive Vagus Nerve Stimulation

Media Appearances

Tracy Centanni: Understanding Young Readers' Brains

In conversation with Tiffany and Abdulla  online

2023-05-24

In this conversation, Dr. Tracy Centanni explores how children often struggle learning how to read in Arabic, leading the UAE to invest in innovative programs like the Iqra curriculum, supported by the Foundation.

View More

Seeking Strategies to Help Children With Dyslexia

TCU Magazine  online

2020-01-05

Watching other kids leave the kindergarten classroom for recess while she worked to decode a single word is a distinct memory for Kate Cordle, a senior studio art major. “I would normally be stopped by my teacher and escorted to a side room to work with her and two other students to try and at least get through the sentence,” she said. “They’d have to whisper what the words were to me so I could speed the process up and go outside.”

View More

Social

Articles

The effect of non-invasive vagus nerve stimulation on memory recall in reading: A pilot study

Behavioural Brain Research

Vishal J. Thakkar, et. al

2023-02-13

Expert reading acquisition is marked by fluent, effortless decoding, and adequate comprehension skills and is required for modern daily life. In spite of its importance, many individuals struggle with reading comprehension even when decoding skills are adequate. Unfortunately, effective reading comprehension interventions are limited, especially for adults.

view more

Categorical perception and influence of attention on neural consistency in response to speech sounds in adults with dyslexia

Annals of Dyslexia

Tracy Centanni, et. al

2021-09-08

Developmental dyslexia is a common neurodevelopmental disorder that is associated with alterations in the behavioral and neural processing of speech sounds, but the scope and nature of that association is uncertain. It has been proposed that more variable auditory processing could underlie some of the core deficits in this disorder. In the current study, magnetoencephalography (MEG) data were acquired from adults with and without dyslexia while they passively listened to or actively categorized tokens from...

view more

Increased variability of stimulus-driven cortical responses is associated with genetic variability in children with and without dyslexia

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

Tracy Centanni, et. al

2018-11-01

Individuals with dyslexia exhibit increased brainstem variability in response to sound. It is unknown as to whether increased variability extends to neocortical regions associated with audition and reading, extends to visual stimuli, and whether increased variability characterizes all children with dyslexia or, instead, a specific subset of children. We evaluated the consistency of stimulus-evoked neural responses in children with (N = 20) or without dyslexia (N = 12) as measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG).

view more

Media

Links

Powered By