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 Gene Associated with Language, Speech and Reading Disorders Identified
A new candidate gene for Specific Language Impairment has been identified by a research team directed at the University of Kansas. A gene on Chromosome 6 – KIAA0319 – was associated with variability in language abilities in a study of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and their family members, as well as with variability in speech and reading abilities. Children with SLI who were selected for the study had no hearing loss, general intellectual deficit or autism.
Language ability involves vocabulary and grammar, whereas speech involves the accuracy of sound production. Both language and speech ability contribute to a child's ability to read. The finding that a candidate gene could influence all three abilities suggests a common pathway that could contribute to overlapping strengths or deficiencies across speech, language and reading.
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 The Rehabilitation of Hemianopic Dyslexia
Hemianopic dyslexia is a frequent and disabling functional impairment following brain injury. This form of dyslexia is an acquired reading disorder whereby patients with homonymous visual field defects have persistent and severe reading difficulties, despite having intact language functions.
Hemianopic dyslexia has received little attention from researchers and clinicians, and this article is the first to review the rehabilitation of patients with the condition. In light of advances in our knowledge about the nature and causes of hemianopic dyslexia, I critically examine the available treatment methods for visual field disorders and evaluate their efficiency in alleviating hemianopic dyslexia.
On the basis of the reviewed evidence, I suggest that compensatory therapies, which attempt to reorganize eye-movement control, are superior to restorative therapies, which aim at visual field restitution. For the rehabilitation of hemianopic dyslexia, I recommend a treatment protocol that involves the systematic and repetitive practice of specific eye movements for reading.
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 US Researcher May Have Found Link Between Conditions such as Autism, Dyslexia, ADHD
University of Louisville researcher Manuel Casanova thinks he has uncovered a common link between conditions such as dyslexia, autism and ADHD.
Now, after publishing his findings in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, Casanova hopes they lead to a treatment for the disorders that doesn't use medications.
The research identified differences in brain tissue known as cortical cell minicolumns, which connect brain signals to process information. In autistic people, there was an abundance of short connectors, but a deficiency of long ones which process complex information.
Casanova analyzed MRI brain scans of 15 dyslexic patients and discovered that many traits of dyslexic brains were exactly opposite those of autistic brains.
The autistic brains were larger, while the dyslexic brains were smaller, with fewer wrinkles. And the dyslexic brains had an abundance of long connections between cortical cell minicolumns, at the expense of short ones.
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 Dyslexia: a New Synergy Between Education and Cognitive Neuroscience
Reading is essential in modern societies, but many children have dyslexia, a difficulty in learning to read. Dyslexia often arises from impaired phonological awareness, the auditory analysis of spoken language that relates the sounds of language to print. Behavioral remediation, especially at a young age, is effective for many, but not all, children. Neuroimaging in children with dyslexia has revealed reduced engagement of the left temporo-parietal cortex for phonological processing of print, altered white-matter connectivity, and functional plasticity associated with effective intervention. Behavioral and brain measures identify infants and young children at risk for dyslexia, and preventive intervention is often effective. A combination of evidence-based teaching practices and cognitive neuroscience measures could prevent dyslexia from occurring in the majority of children who would otherwise develop dyslexia.
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 Risks Raised for Young with Dyslexia
Young people with dyslexia may be at greater risk of getting hurt on the job, according to a new study from the Toronto-based Institute for Work and Health (IWH). 'The early indicators are that dyslexia contributes to higher injury rates among young workers,' said IWH's Dr Curtis Breslin, who led the study. 'It could be that the particular problems with reading, spelling and writing that characterise dyslexia make it more difficult to understand and remember safety training or contribute to poor supervisor-worker communications.' The study, published in the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health, is one of the first to look at the relationship between learning disabilities, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and job injury rates among young people.
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 Trying to Learn How Learning Works
"New insights from many different fields are converging to create a new science of learning that may transform educational practices," begins a report led by Andrew Meltzoff of the University of Washington in Seattle. The review in the current Science magazine makes the case for psychologists, neuroscientists, roboticists and teachers combining to quietly create a new field that combines everything from how brains grow to how classrooms work into a new kind of learning research.
For example, a companion study in the current Science by John Gabrieli of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, illustrates how neuroscience and education researchers have teamed up to tackle dyslexia, a difficulty with reading and vocabulary that afflicts 5% to 17% of children. Behavioral and brain measures can now identify dyslexic tendencies in infants, and lead to teaching that can "prevent dyslexia from occurring in the majority of children who would otherwise develop dyslexia," according to the study.
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 New 'Science of Learning' Could Re-invent Teaching Techniques
Scientists are quietly tackling education issues, offering up new tools, new approaches and even a new discipline.
"New insights from many different fields are converging to create a new science of learning that may transform educational practices," begins a report led by Andrew Meltzoff. The review in the current Science journal makes the case that psychologists, neuroscientists, roboticists and teachers should create a new field that combines everything from how brains grow to how classrooms work into a new kind of learning research.
For example, a companion study in Science shows how neuroscience and education researchers have teamed up to tackle dyslexia. Behavioral and brain measures can identify dyslexic tendencies in infants and lead to teaching that can "prevent dyslexia from occurring in the majority of children who would otherwise develop dyslexia," the study states.
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 Phonics Changes the Structure of the Brain
The study reported that the brain function of poor readers actually changes to resemble the brain function of “good” readers when they have been taught to read through instruction that is direct, systematic, and focuses on the sounds and letters that make up words, the meanings of words, and helping children read accurately and quickly.
Using functional MRI scanners, researchers were able to document that effective reading instruction not only improves reading ability but actually changes the brain’s functioning so children can read more efficiently. These struggling readers were taught to read using a comprehensive reading program that focused on systematically teaching phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary and spelling and, as a result, formed new and lasting neurological connections and pathways in parts of their brain that regulate reading ability.
So, if the scientific evidence strongly proves that phonics instruction re-maps the brain for the better, why does the educational establishment, for the most part, continue to ignore the data and teach ineffective reading (and math) methods?
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 Dyslexics in the Classroom
Last summer, we conducted some in-depth research into public attitudes to dyslexia. I'm afraid to say the results were not encouraging. One of the astonishing things we discovered was that 75% of the population claim to understand little or nothing about how dyslexic people think.
With dyslexic thinkers making up an estimated 10% of the population, most people have either a friend, loved-one, relative, colleague or client with dyslexia. So why are we so in the dark about how dyslexics think?
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 Reports Outline Dyslexia Research from Bern University
Scientists discuss in 'About the role of visual field defects in pure alexia' new findings in dyslexia. According to recent research published in the journal Brain, "Pure alexia is an acquired reading disorder characterized by a disproportionate prolongation of reading time as a function of word length. Although the vast majority of cases reported in the literature show a right-sided visual defect, little is known about the contribution of this low-level visual impairment to their reading difficulties."
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 Funding Announced to Help Understand the Causes of Dyscalculia
Scientists at the UK's Cambridge University's Centre for Neuroscience in Education have been awarded over 1 million pounds by the Medical Research Council to investigate developmental dyscalculia using brain imaging techniques.
Developmental dyscalculia is a selective and specific difficulty in dealing with mathematical information. The condition is as prevalent as developmental dyslexia, both of which affect around 7% of school children. At present, understanding of dyscalculia is limited and it is hoped with this funding more information will be found about the specific processing differences in the brain involved in the condition.
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 Family Under the Microscope: ADHD Caused by Stress During Pregnancy?
Getting stressed or anxious during late pregnancy is not just bad for you, it's bad for your foetus. There is now overwhelming evidence that Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder and behaviour problems are directly caused by maternal stress during pregnancy.
Several groups of children have been followed from before birth to late childhood. At seven to 10, those whose mothers were stressed or anxious years before, in pregnancy, were significantly more likely to have ADHD symptoms, behavioral problems and anxiety.
What Causes ADHD?
ADHD Best Understoon as a Cultural Construct?
 'Delay' in ADHD Children's Brains
The brains of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) do not mature at the same rate as their peers, a US study says.
Researchers looked at 450 children - half of whom had ADHD - and found an average delay of three years in the development of the cortex. This, the brain's outer mantle, is key for both attention and planning.
The team from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) looked at when and where the brain reached peak "thickness", a marker of maturity. Among the 223 youngsters with ADHD, half of 40,000 cortex sites examined reached peak thickness at 10.5, compared to age 7.5 in a matched group without the disorder.
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 Multitasking Might be Bad for Your Brain
Being able to juggle multiple tasks at once may not be as productive as we think. A new study from the National Academy of Sciences found that people who perform multiple tasks in a variety of media — like instant messaging, Web surfing, word processing, texting and more — are more easily distracted by irrelevant information and therefore have a more difficult time when needed to switch attention from one task to another.
“This study adds to a growing body of literature that says, in general, that multitasking is going to be problematic for people, that it does compromise productivity, and that its consequences can be quite severe in situations like driving,” says David W. Goodman, M.D., director of the Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Center of Maryland, in Baltimore.
His suggestion? “Turn off your BlackBerry so that it doesn’t vibrate every time you get a text or an e-mail; put the e-mails on your schedule and don’t be a slave to the BlackBerry buzzer. I check my e-mails once an hour, once every two hours — I’m not responding to them as they come in.”
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Reality the Loser as the Internet Puts Brains into Overdrive
 Texting Could Increase Attention Deficit Disorders
Texting, Twittering and other forms of instant communication could lead to a rise in attention deficit disorders, Baroness Susan Greenfield, the neuroscientist, has warned. Speaking in the wake of Australian research showing that predictive texting makes youngsters more impulsive and less accurate, she asked: "Does growing up in an environment where pressing a couple of buttons results in seeing the word you want on your screen, condition the brain into thinking that the whole world works that way?"
"I believe that these speedy exchanges may be contributing to the decline in our attention spans and perhaps even towards the rise of attention deficit disorders."
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Vermont Clinical Study into ADHD Seeks Participants
Dr Richard Rubin of the Vermont Clinical Study Center is seeking 10 to 16 year old participants for a national research study of an approved ADHD medicine in an investigational use with children who have ADHD and dyslexia.
The study provides testing for ADD/ADHD, Reading Disability/dyslexia and Working Memory before and during use of the research medicine. All study-related evaluations, study medicine, and doctor visits are provided at no cost.
Call Annette at 802-865-4555.
Vermont Clinical Study Center.
789 Pine Street, Burlington,VT.
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