Is your child a poor reader, have dyslexia, autism or other developmental disorders such as ADHD?
The latest brain research from Carnegie Mellon scientists offers hope. After 100 hours of remedial reading training, the brains of children aged 8 to 10 were examined with brain imaging. The “wiring” or white matter, connecting the processing gray areas of the brain was shown to have increased. Children who had no problems or who received no training showed no improvement. In other words, remedial training will make your struggling kid smarter by altering brain structure – probably the earlier the intervention, the better.
What might be wrong with the brain "wiring"?
Earlier studies showed that in the case of some dyslexics, the white “wiring” and the gray processing areas were disorganized, making it difficult for signals to travel efficiently – a bit like UPS taking the scenic route instead of the highway. This may account for a brain battling to correctly sequence a complex task such as reading, or filtering out “background noise” from relevant information, or processing fast changing sounds like the syllables ba and da. As one researcher put it: the affected brain is like an orchestra with a conductor who doesn’t do his job properly – all the musicians can play perfectly, but they receive signals to play at the wrong time.
So what type of remedial training in the case of poor readers may be most efficient?
Some researchers using fMRI brain scans have shown that computerized cognitive sound training helps. The poor reader is often better at interpreting pictures than abstract phonics, so linking the sounds to concrete objects such as clay figures is good – right brain learning. The book Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz is an excellent resource. For those in Wisconsin, a program offered by University of Oshkosh called Project Success may be of help. Although originally developed for adults, this program is now being extended to help children.
Comments
This has NOTHING to do with ADHD. It's not even mentioned except as "maybe someday people will have hope."
Good job on using it as a hook to pull people into your story and up your reading count. Nasty, mean-spirited, and selfish too. Dangle a headline that offers hope for truly desperate people and then it turns out to be a lie?
Shame on you. I hope you are proud of yourself.
John,
I have one autistic boy and doing my best to help him as much as possible. Recently, I have read some similar things about this subject and personally think that it may be true in some instances. So far, nobodies is arguing about the malfunctioning between left and right side brain, which is good as opposed to many other things including genetics as well. One for sure, there must be a perfect alignment between both sides to function properly. It's all about chemistry and it is a very different thing how this chemistry got screwed up environmentally, through the food, vaccines and only God knows what else. I am not a doctor nor have anything to do with the author of this article either. Coincidentally, I am reading one book called "Disconnected Minds" that talks about the same thing and offers some steps to help our kids.
Hus
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