Neuron Learning

The Reading Brain

Interesting Article in Scientific American magazine about reading, cognitive skill development and brain plasticity.

The article talks about the need for specific instruction on phonemic awareness for students who have difficulty reading. It goes on to emphasise orthographic, phonological, semantic, morphological, and syntactic knowledge necessary for fluent reading in an integrated, systematic, and fun fashion. Finally they identify semantic development, (more about this key function later in the blog).

We certainly "tick all the boxes" in their reading strategy using Fast ForWord.

Here is an extract..
.......The story of reading's development is a complex tale of equal parts human invention and neural plasticity. The human mind created reading, but that skill could only come about because of the brain's unique capacity to form new circuits. Scientists have long known that reading depends on an intricate set of neural circuits in the brain, but the exact operation of these circuits remains an area of ongoing investigation. Now, a study  by cognitive neuroscientists Laurent Cohen, Stanislas Deaene and their colleagues in the March 1st issue of the journal Neuroimage gives us some new insights into the reading brain.

Click here for the full article

Learning disabilities linked to later language problems

A Chicago university has suggested that a degenerative condition that affects language is linked with learning disabilities.

Scientists at Northwestern University found that people who suffer with primary progressive aphasia, a neurodegenerative condition affecting language, are more likely to have had a history of learning disabilities. People who have the condition experience deterioration in their language capabilities as they get older. The signs of aphasia include struggling to speak expressively, trouble understanding speech, and difficulty with writing and reading. In the report, the scientists state: "This relationship may exist in only a small subgroup of persons with dyslexia without necessarily implying that the entire population with dyslexia or their family members are at higher risk of primary progressive aphasia." The effects of aphasia differ depending on the individual and the symptoms can sometimes be eased by working with a speech therapist. Northwestern University's study has been published in the February edition of Archives of Neurology.

Court Ruling that Dyslexia is a Disability

The Times 26 July 2007

A Metropolitan Police officer has won a test legal victory that dyslexia is a disability in the eyes of the law.

Chief Inspector David Paterson – who gained promotion despite his condition – won a ruling from the Employment Appeal Tribunal that he is “a disabled person”.

Mr Paterson joined the police in Epsom in 1983, became a sergeant in 1989 and was made a chief inspector in Vauxhall in 1999. But in 2004 he discovered that he suffered from dyslexia and accused the Met of discriminating against him. He claimed that the force failed to make reasonable adjustments, particularly in the processes for deciding whether he might be promoted to superintendent.

An employment tribunal had ruled earlier that Mr Paterson was not disabled within the terms of the Disability Discrimination Act 1996. It found that dyslexia did not have a “substantial adverse effect on his ability to carry out day-to-day activities”.

But the Employment Appeal Tribunal, headed by Mr Justice Elias, one of the country’s senior High Court judges, has now ruled that, as his professional advancement depended upon his sitting examinations, the dyslexia did constitute a “substantial” impairment.

In its decision just made public, Mr Justice Elias said: “In our view, carrying out an assessment or examination is properly to be described as a normal, day-to-day activity. Moreover, in our view the act of reading and comprehension is itself a normal, day-to-day activity.

He said that the evidence, which the tribunal accepted, was that Mr Paterson was “disadvantaged to the extent of requiring 25 per cent extra time to do an assessment”. As a result, he said that it “inevitably followed that there was a substantial adverse effect on normal, day-to-day activities”.

The case now goes back to the tribunal to decide if Mr Paterson’s claim for discrimination should succeed.

Mohini Bharania, Mr Paterson’s solicitor at Russell Jones & Walker, said: “This is a landmark judgment, which has the potential to benefit the millions of dyslexia sufferers in the UK who are perfectly capable employees, but who may struggle with exams.”

Class Divide and Learning Disadvantage

By the age of three, children from disadvantaged families are already lagging a full year behind their middle-class contemporaries in social and educational development, pioneering research by a London university reveals today.

In a series of vocabulary tests, the three-year-old sons and daughters of graduate parents were found to be 10 months ahead of those from families with few educational qualifications; they were 12 months ahead in their understanding of colours, letters, numbers, sizes and shapes.

Researchers from the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education in the University of London found girls were three months ahead of boys on both measures.

from The Guardian

Lecture

How Neuroscience is Improving Reading and Language Skills. A talk by Dr William Jenkins. The presentation will cover how the brain learns, illustrating brain plasticity and neuroscientific interventions.He will show how learning skills are developed using computer based interventions. He will identify the key skills required to read effectively. Bill will refer to his extensive collaboration with Dr Paula Tallal and Mike Merzenich. The talk will cover scientific research in depth. It is suitable for educational professionals and parents. Click here for more details

Wordwiza

Here is a clever innovation to help students decode words, track words and underline.

Wordwiza

We will start using them with our students, we think that the novelty, innovation and simple method will be effective and very motivating for them.

John

Review on Fast ForWord

This article appeared in the Irish Examiner February 2006.

It is a good case study on how one child in particular had his life changed after working on Fast ForWord. Note we have been able to reduce our prices since then! The article covers dyslexia and reading difficulties as well as the improvements in confidence. Click here Download 060224_irishexaminer.pdf

Observer Article on Dyslexia

A good article on dyslexia that also explores the visual aspects as well as the phonological ones.

"we are still finding our way with a disorder (dyslexia) that affects between 5 and 10 per cent of our adult population and an estimated 1.2m children."

"The core of John Stein's research has been devoted to showing what causes these differences, and in so doing suggest potential advances in early diagnosis and treatment."

Click here to read

Dyslexia begins when the wires don't meet

.....researchers now know that the reading disability involves a weakness in the part of the brain that decodes the sounds of written language.

.....As readers become more skilled, an area further back in the brain, next to the visual processing area, starts to show greater activity.

Sally Shaywitz, a dyslexia expert at Yale University, says that is the "word form" area. As readers learn more and more words on sight, without having to sound them out, this area takes on an ever greater share of the reading task, she says.

"When we first learn how to read," she said, "it's effortful. But after you've read a word a certain number of times, those nerve endings come together and then it's stored in the word-form area."

Lots of other insights into reading and dyslexia here.
article continues....

Brain Timing and Dyslexia

UCLA studies how brain tells time

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, are challenging the popular theory of how humans keep track of time.
For decades, scientists have believed that the brain has an internal clock that allows it to keep track of time. But a study published Thursday in the journal Neuron proposed a new model in which changes to the brain's cells help the brain monitor the passage of time.

"The value of this research lies in understanding how the brain works," said Dean Buonomano, associate professor of neurobiology and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a member of the university's Brain Research Institute. "Many complex human behaviors -- from understanding speech to playing catch to performing music -- rely on the brain's ability to accurately tell time. Yet no one knows how the brain does it."

Time-related information is critical to understanding speech, so determining how the brain tells time is an important step toward understanding the causes of diseases such as dyslexia that impair linguistic abilities, he said.