New Brain Findings On Dyslexic Children
The vast majority of school-aged children can focus on the voice of a teacher amid the cacophony of the typical classroom thanks to a brain that automatically focuses on relevant, predictable and repeating auditory information, according to new research from Northwestern University. ...more
12 Nov 2009
Neural Mechanism Reveals Why Dyslexic Brain Has Trouble Distinguishing Speech From Noise
New research reveals that children with developmental dyslexia have a deficit in a brain mechanism involved in the perception of speech in a noisy environment. The study, published by Cell Press in the November 12 issue of the journal Neuron, provides the first direct evidence that the human auditory brainstem exhibits remarkable moment-to-moment plasticity and undergoes a fine tuning that is strongly associated with noise exclusion. ...more
12 Nov 2009
Highlights From The 158th Acoustical Society Of America Meeting In San Antonio
Everyone listens to music at least now and then. For many of us, music is a casual experience, a moment's entertainment. But for those who practiced in a school orchestra or who play a musical instrument professionally, the musical experience can be something more. ...more
22 Oct 2009
Scientists Locate Literacy In The Brain With The Help Fof Former Colombian Guerrillas
A unique study of former guerrillas in Colombia has helped scientists redefine their understanding of the key regions of the brain involved in literacy. The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, has enabled the researchers to see how brain structure changed after learning to read. Language is a uniquely human ability that evolved at some point in the six million years since humans and chimpanzees diverged. ...more
15 Oct 2009
Dyslexia Varies Across Language Barriers
Chinese-speaking children with dyslexia have a disorder that is distinctly different, and perhaps more complicated and severe, than that of English speakers. Those differences can be seen in the brain and in the performance of Chinese children on visual and oral language tasks, reveals a report published online on October 12th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. ...more
13 Oct 2009
Gene Associated With Language, Speech And Reading Disorders
A new candidate gene for Specific Language Impairment has been identified by a research team directed by Mabel Rice at the University of Kansas, in collaboration with Shelley Smith, University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Javier Gayán of Neocodex, Seville, Spain. The finding, reported in the current issue of the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, was discovered by examining genes previously identified as candidate genes for reading impairments or speech sound disorders. ...more
29 Aug 2009
Stop Seeing Red By Looking Through Blue-Tinted Lenses, UK
As the UK enters a summer of discontent, one company has a vision to make the outlook decidedly brighter - by looking at life through blue-tinted spectacles. Wearing blue lenses has a calming effect, can reduce appetite and even help with dyslexia. Now online optics specialists Ciliary Blue are offering blue views to cheer up a nation blighted by recession, redundancies and bank balances in the red. ...more
21 July 2009
Neurological Differences Support Dyslexia Subtypes
Parts of the right hemisphere of the brains of people with dyslexia have been shown to differ from those of normal readers. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare the two groups, and were able to associate the neurological differences found with different language difficulties within the dyslexic group. ...more
26 June 2009
Discoveries Shed New Light On How The Brain Processes What The Eye Sees
Researchers at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience (CMBN) at Rutgers University in Newark have identified the need to develop a new framework for understanding "perceptual stability" and how we see the world with their discovery that visual input obtained during eye movements is being processed by the brain but blocked from awareness. ...more
03 June 2009
$5 Million Grant Funds Yale Study Aimed At Identifying A Genetic Test For Dyslexia
Yale School of Medicine scientist Jeffrey R. Gruen, M.D., has received a $5.2 million grant from the Manton Foundation to further his research on the genetics of dyslexia. Gruen's discovery of a gene involved in dyslexia was named one of the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of 2005 by the journal Science. ...more
05 May 2009
Finding May Provide Insights For Reading Disorders
Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center have found that an area known to be important for reading in the left visual cortex contains neurons that are specialized to process written words as whole word units. Although some theories of reading as well as neuropsychological and experimental data have argued for the existence of a neural representation for whole written real words (an "orthographic lexicon"), evidence for this has been elusive. ...more
01 May 2009
SPEEDY Babies A New Behavioural Syndrome
Children's speech and language disorders caused by unknown factors are common. The disorders vary in type and manifest themselves differently in different ages. Delayed motor development is widely known to coexist with speech and language disorders. However, hardly any attention has been paid to children in whom delayed speech development is associated with learning to walk unassisted at an early stage. ...more
25 Apr 2009
Discovery By JHU Researcher That Brain Cells Have 'Memory'
As we look at the world around us, images flicker into our brains like so many disparate pixels on a computer screen that change every time our eyes move, which is several times a second. Yet we don't perceive the world as a constantly flashing computer display. ...more
04 Apr 2009
Unraveling The Roots Of Dyslexia
By peering into the brains of people with dyslexia compared to normal readers, a study published online on March 12th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, has shed new light on the roots of the learning disability, which affects four to ten percent of the population. ...more
14 Mar 2009
Help For Persons With Aphasia - Computerized Writing Aids
It is possible to improve writing skills for those with aphasia with the aid of computerised writing aids. This is the conclusion of a doctoral thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Aphasia affects the ability to understand and use spoken language, and the ability to read and write. ...more
04 Feb 2009
The Effect Of Parental Education On The Heritability Of Children's Reading Disability
Parental education is a strong predictor of socioeconomic status and children's educational environment. Nevertheless, some children continue to experience reading failure in spite of high parental education and support for learning to read. University of Colorado at Boulder psychologists Angela Friend, John C. DeFries and Richard K. ...more
29 Dec 2008
How We Identify Letters
The next time you are reading a book, or even as you read this article, consider the words that you are seeing. How do you recognize these words? Substantial research has shown that while reading, we recognize words by their letters and not by the general shape of the word. However, it was largely unknown how we differentiate one letter from another. ...more
26 Nov 2008
Workshop To Raise Awareness Of Dyslexia, East Kent, England
Dyslexia Awareness Week is to be marked in East Kent with a workshop where experts will present basic strategies and tools to help untap the potential of people who feel dyslexia is holding them back in life. The workshop 'Could Dyslexia be holding you back! Explore the journey to open horizons' will take place Canterbury Christ Church University's Hall Place Enterprise Centre, Harbledown, Canterbury, on 5th November. ...more
21 Oct 2008
Gene Hunt In Dyslexia
Letters are warped, syllables left out about four percent of the German population are dyslexics. Scientists seek to spot responsible genes and try to develop a genetic screening test to support affected children at an earlier age. Scool? Skuul? Or perhaps shcool? The beginning is a delicate time especially in reading and writing. Twisted letters or other beginner´s mistakes disappear quite fast as learning progresses. ...more
11 Oct 2008
'Math Dyslexia' Unravelled
Although school has been back for less than a month, it is likely that many children are already experiencing frustration and confusion in math class. Research at The University of Western Ontario in London, Canada could change the way we view math difficulties and how we assist children who face those problems. Daniel Ansari is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Western. ...more