Neuron Learning

Reading program returns in Queens

here is an article about a school in New York returning to Fast ForWord. The schools that work with us do very well in improving their students' skills. This is because of not only the programme but the comittment of the teachers, parents and students to make it work.

You can read the full article and comments here

BY NICHOLAS HIRSHON  DAILY NEWS WRITER NEW YORK Tuesday, February 26th 2008, 4:00 AM

Parents and kids at PS 87 in Middle Village are happy that a computer program that helps learning-disabled kids has won a reprieve with new funding.

A computer program - hailed for improving the reading skills of learning-disabled kids - will return to a Queens school this fall after a 2-1/2-year hiatus, its principal said. Public School 87 in Middle Village won praise from parents in the late 1990s after first signing up for Fast ForWord - language exercises designed for children with conditions like dyslexia.

But budget cuts forced an end to software upgrades a few years ago, Principal Caryn Michaeli said. The school lost out on new features as well as regular curriculum and tech support.

Last year, PS 87 mom Lucy Accardo heard Fast ForWord could help her 8-year-old learning-disabled daughter, Alessia. This month, Accardo helped convince local pols to foot the $10,800 bill to reinstitute the program.

"I'm ecstatic. I feel like a kid at [Walt] Disney World," said Accardo, 33, predicting Fast ForWord will improve Alessia's reading comprehension abilities and overall confidence.

"This is a hidden secret," she added, "and it's a shame no one knows about it."

Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Forest Hills) will contribute $8,000 to the project, a spokesman said. State Sen. Serphin Maltese (R-Glendale) pledged $4,000. Any cash left after Fast ForWord payments will go toward new school computers, Michaeli said.

The intensive program "develops brain processing efficiency" through daily exercises, according to the manufacturer's Web site.

Among the product's fans is former PS 87 parent JoAnne Scichilone, who believes her dyslexic sons - Ricky, 13, and Joey, 16 - significantly benefited from the program.

"It's my charge now to make sure everybody who needs it gets it," said Scichilone, 36. "We just started seeing improvement, improvement, improvement."

Michaeli said she would have funded Fast ForWord, but it didn't fit into her $6,000 hardware budget, which is set by the city.

"We have to make sure we can staff teachers and stuff like that before external programs," Michaeli said.

But Hevesi and Maltese chipped in. Maltese even suggested he will fund Fast ForWord at more schools if it's a success at PS 87.

"A program like this could really make a difference in a kid's life," he said.

Irish Times Article

Following a learning curve New Lives: After years overseas John and Joyce Kerins return home with another plan, writes Sylvia Thompson. There is a widely held notion that if you stay in a country for more than five years, you are less likely to leave. Such a notion is probably based on the belief that we will have found enough reasons to stay or to go within that time period. Interestingly, Cork couple John and Joyce Kerins have lived in various parts of the world, but they never stayed much longer than five years in each place. "We're back in Cork now about two years and I'd say we'll give it about another three before we consider moving on," says John Kerins who runs computer-based reading and language skills centres with his wife, Joyce. The Kerins met and married in their early 20s and set off to London in the mid-1980s like many Irish people of their generation. "I studied chartered accountancy with the view that it would be a good passport for travelling," says John. Meanwhile, Joyce did a course in Montessori teaching in England and worked as a Montessori teacher in London. "It was great fun. London was like home from home then. We still have lots of friends there. We bought an apartment while we were there and then sold it which put on the accelerator to move out." An opportunity to work as the finance director with Pepsi with responsibility for the Middle East and Africa arose for John. The head office was in Dubai so they moved there but travelled around Africa a lot. "Our two children, Chloe (15) and Rory (13) were born while we were in Dubai," says Joyce. "It was a great place to be with small children - there was home help, lots of new parks, beautiful beaches and the shopping was great." While in Dubai, John left his job at Pepsi and started his own business, marketing and sampling health products in supermarkets in the Middle East. "This was a whole new world for me. It was a rough and rugged place to do business in. You never knew where the roads would end, whether your orders would arrive on time and you were dependent on translators and interpreters for all your business." The Kerins also lived in Dubai during the Gulf War. "American companies were very security conscious and many families were moved to Cyprus. We lived for six weeks in a hotel in Limisol but moved back when the threat lessened," explains John. Another job offer for John - this time with Coca-Cola - presented the Kerins with the option of living in Moscow. "I'd no interest in going there so we made a deal that we'd fly to London to do our Christmas shopping and go check out the offer in Moscow," says Joyce. One month later, the family moved to Moscow. "It was my favourite place to live even though I hadn't been keen to move there," says Joyce. "The Russians are wonderful people. They have a great ability to share and enjoy the moment. There was also a great sense of camaraderie among the expats there." While in Moscow, Joyce started a Montessori school and also pursued a new interest in art, visiting artists in their studios. "Artists were subsidised in Russia. They got good education and privileges but with the collapse of the economy, they had to get more commercial. I bought a lot of art in Russia." The collapse of the rouble in 1998 turned the attention of the Kerins family back to Europe. "The economy changed overnight and there was an exodus of expats out of Moscow. We had three great years there and we had to decide what to do," says John. Barcelona beckoned and they moved to live in a Catalan village overlooking the Maesme coastline. "We were in the mountains surrounded by vineyards, overlooking castles and the sea. It was beautiful," says Joyce. John began "buying and selling private language schools across Europe, which he says he financed from "savings" as his salaries in Moscow and Dubai were tax-free which allowed him to do so. Meanwhile, Joyce got to know some artists in Barcelona and organised tours of studios for visitors and international residents. "Barcelona is full of artists. It was interesting to watch the trends and begin to see artists who only exhibited and sold their paintings in the United States," she says. While the Kerins always came back to Ireland for six weeks during the summer, Joyce had a yearning to come home to live. "The children were at an age that they didn't know where they belonged. I felt it was important they had an anchor, a base and an identity," she explains. "I also felt I needed to come home and recharge my batteries. I knew I wouldn't grow old in Barcelona but I don't think I'll grow old here either." On their return to Cork city, they immediately noticed how things had improved. "When we left, Cork was a derelict city. Now, it is confident and there is a nice sense of prosperity." While doing business deals on foreign language schools, the Kerins came across a computer-based reading/language skills package which they felt they could bring to Ireland. The highly structured, repetitive learning system known variously as Neuron Learning or Fast ForWord was already being used in up to 30 countries around the world. The Kerins bought the licence to train practitioners in the approach in Ireland and Britain. "We train and supervise practitioners who deliver the package to families and schools. It involves children working on their reading and language skills at a computer every day for about an hour. With it we have seen children improve their reading in four to six weeks," says John. So with their children in secondary schools in Cork city, the Kerins are staying put.for now. Latin America and China are on their horizons. "I've really enjoyed moving around. We've great friends around the world," says Joyce. "The children love Ireland but they often say that they look forward to travelling and working abroad again."

Brainpower Summit

Brainpower summit reveals new research for lifelong education

By The Times-Union, Florida

Imagine what would happen if every man, woman and child in Duval County could learn faster, think more clearly and retain more of what they've seen and heard.

, No this isn't science fiction. What's happening today in the field of brain-based research could have a positive impact on literally everyone in our community, from preschool to our elderly population.

That is why Duval County public schools and our partners are hosting 500 local leaders from the education, health care, government and business sectors this Thursday and Friday at a free, two-day summit at the Prime Osborn Convention Center.

National and local experts - the ones making the breakthrough advances in neuroscience - will be here to help these Jacksonville leaders answer one important question: Can we improve the brainpower of our entire community?

Traditionally, it was thought that the human brain became "hard-wired" at an early age and after that could no longer grow or change.

The brainpower you had around ages 3 to 5 was all you were ever going to get, end of story.

But now, breakthroughs in neuroscience research reveal that the brain can continue to develop and improve throughout one's lifetime. And that type of news has the potential to affect every kind of community service offered to Duval County residents.

Realizing the truth about our "transformable" brains wipes away myths that have done us a disservice for decades.

Think it's inevitable that your memory will weaken as you age? Wrong.

According to neuroscientist Steven Miller, exercising the brain, good nutrition and adequate sleep can delay the decline, reverse it or, best of all, keep us at the peak of our abilities.

The research also offers a solution for dropouts, many of whom feel that the system gave up on them.

Indeed, some educators consider at-risk adolescent students to be set in their ways and think that all that can be done is to back off and offer lower-level alternative tracks.

But adolescence is the second-fastest growth phase for the brain; the areas that will control decision making and reasoning are being established during this time. Clearly, it is not the time to "back off."

Great strides forward are being tallied here by Nemours' BrightStart! Initiative that focuses on early identification of preschoolers at risk for dyslexia.

For those who need it, the free program offers intensive educational instruction to prepare these youngsters for success in kindergarten.

Nemours' results are impressive.

Two-thirds of the at-risk preschoolers moved to the normal range of early literacy skills after intervention.

In conjunction with the Jacksonville summit, Nemours is hosting a presentation by the dean of the Harvard Medical School, Joseph B. Martin.

This past year in a number of our Duval County schools, success stories came to life in students using Fast ForWord, a technological intervention that grew from recent research.

It was not unusual for Duval County students to advance their reading level significantly after a few months with the program.

Neuroscience research can influence every aspect and phase of life, from preparing preschool children for the competition of academics and future employment to the type of treatments provided for stroke or trauma victims.

I'm excited to say those changes are coming to Duval County, thanks to a forward-thinking School Board and dedicated staff.

The summit this week will educate leaders on practical ways in which this research can serve the people of Jacksonville.

Experts such as Martin, Michael Merzenich of the Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences at the University of California San Francisco, Paula Tallal of Rutgers University and Laura Bailet of Nemours BrightStarts! will be on hand to help us understand the potential of this new body of knowledge.

It is possible for every man, woman and child in our county to learn faster, think more clearly and remember more of what they've seen and heard.

We can help students who think the system has given up on them.

We can stop and even repair certain types of mental deterioration.

The brain is our frontier for the 21st century, and I have every confidence that we will build a new and better world from our discoveries.

Joseph Wise is superintendent of Duval County public schools.

Brain Plasticity in Newsweek

Rewiring the brain

The scientists are not so naive as to think they have discovered a magic wand that can turn animosity into compassion and hatred into benevolence, but the tarantula definitely raised their hopes. Over the years psychologists Phillip Shaver and Mario Mikulincer had uncovered more and more evidence that people’s sense of emotional security shapes whether they become altruistic or selfish, tolerant or xenophobic, open or defensive. Once upon a time, that would have been that, for whatever their roots such traits were thought to be, by adulthood, as hard-wired as a computer’s motherboard.

But with the new millennium scientists were finding that brain wiring can change, even in adults. That got Shaver, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and Mikulincer, at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, thinking: could they activate unused or dormant circuits to trigger the sense of emotional security that underlies compassion and benevolence?

To find out, they gave volunteers overt or subliminal cues to activate brain circuitry encoding thoughts of someone who offered unconditional love and protection—a parent, a lover, God. The goal was to induce the feeling of security that makes it more likely someone will display, say, altruism and not selfishness. It worked. People became more willing to give blood and do volunteer work, and less hostile to ethnic groups different from their own.

OK, so they didn’t all sign up to work in Darfur. But as recently as a decade ago, proposing that an adult brain could be rewired for compassion without experiencing a life-altering epiphany would have been career suicide for a neuroscientist. Not anymore. Experts are overthrowing the old dogma that, by the ripe old age of 3, the human brain is relatively fixed in form and function. Yes, new memories could form, new skills could be mastered and wisdom could (in some) be gained. But the basic cartography of the adult brain was thought to be as immutable as the color of your eyes.

This “neurological nihilism,” as psychiatrist Norman Doidge calls it in his recent book, “The Brain That Changes Itself,” “spread through our culture, even stunting our overall view of human nature. Since the brain could not change, human nature, which emerges from it, seemed necessarily fixed and unalterable as well.”

But the dogma is wrong, the nihilism groundless. In the last few years neuroscientists have dismantled it pillar by pillar, with profound implications for our view of what it means to be human. “These discoveries change everything about how we should think of ourselves, who we are and how we get to be that way,” says neuroscientist Michael Merzenich of the University of California, San Francisco. “We now know that the qualities that define us at one moment in time come from experiences that shape the physical and functional brain, and that continue to shape it as long as we live.”

The brain remains a work in progress even on so basic a parameter as its allotment of neurons. For decades, scientists assumed that adding new neurons to this intricate machine could only spell trouble, like throwing a few extra wires into the guts of your iPod. But in 1998 Peter Eriksson of Sweden’s Sahlgrenska University Hospital and colleagues discovered that brains well into their 60s and 70s undergo “neurogenesis.” The new neurons appear in the hippocampus, the structure deep in the brain that takes thoughts and perceptions and turns them into durable memories. And studies in lab animals show that the new neurons slip into existing brain circuits as smoothly as the Beckhams onto the Hollywood A list.

Brain structure is also malleable, recording the footprints of our lives and thoughts. The amount of neural real estate devoted to a task, such as playing the violin, expands with use. And when an area of the brain is injured, as in a stroke, a different region — often on the mirror-image side — can take over its function. That overthrew the long-held view called “localisationism,” which dates back to 1861, when French surgeon Paul Broca linked the ability to speak to a spot in the left frontal lobe. But contrary to the belief that particular regions are unalterably wired for specific functions, even one as basic as the visual cortex can undergo a career switch. In people who lose their sight at a young age, the visual cortex processes touch or sound or language. Receiving no signals from the eyes, the visual cortex snaps out of its “waiting for Godot” funk and reactivates dormant wires, enabling it to perform a different job.

If something as fundamental as the visual cortex can shrug off its genetic destiny, it should come as little surprise that other brain circuits can, too. A circuit whose hyperactivity causes obsessive-compulsive disorder can be quieted with psychotherapy. Patterns of activity that underlie depression can be shifted when patients learn to think about their sad thoughts differently. Circuits too sluggish to perceive some speech sounds (staccato ones such as the sound of “d” or “p”) can be trained to do so, helping kids overcome dyslexia. For these and other brain changes, change is always easier in youth, but the window of opportunity never slams shut.

From these successes, neuroscientists have extracted a powerful lesson. If they can identify what has gone wrong in the brain to cause, say, dyslexia, they might be able to straighten out aberrant wiring, quiet an overactive circuit or juice up a sluggish one. It won’t happen overnight.

But UCSF’s Merzenich believes we have glimpsed only the surface of the ability of the brain to change. “The qualities that define a person have a neurological residence and are malleable,” he says. “We know that in a psychopath, there is no activation of brain areas associated with empathy when he sees someone suffering. Can we change that? I don’t know exactly how, but I believe we can. I believe that just as you can take a 17-year-old and put him through basic training, inuring him to violence, we can take a person who is insensitive and make him sensitive to others’ pain. These things that define us, I’m convinced, can be altered.” Only more research will reveal how easily, and how much.

But what of the genes that shape our disposition and temperament? Here, too, malleability rules. As is often the case, this effect is easiest to detect in lab animals. Rats develop starkly different personalities depending on how they are reared. Specifically, if Mom is attentive and regularly licks and grooms them, they become well-adjusted little rodents, mellow and curious and non-neurotic mouse or rat. If Mom is neglectful, her pups grow up to be timid, jumpy and stressed out. Once, this was attributed to the powerful social effects of maternal care. But it turns out that Mom’s ministrations can reach into the pups’ very DNA. Maternal neglect silences genes for receptors in the pups’ brains, with the result that they have few receptors and hence a hair-trigger stress response. Maternal care keeps these genes on, so the pups’ brains have lots of receptors and a muted stress response. Inattentive moms also silence the genes for estrogen receptors in their daughters’ brains; the females grow up to be less attentive mothers themselves.
-SHARON BEGLEY(Newsweek)