dyslexia therapy

Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website

Remedial reading program improves brain wiring in children

An imaging study involving 72 children aged 8 to 10 has provided the first evidence that intensive instruction to improve reading skills in young children causes the brain to physically rewire itself. The study found that the ability of white matter tracts to transmit signals efficiently improved substantially after the children received six months (100 hours) of remedial training. Moreover, those who showed the most white matter change also showed the most improvement in reading ability. Previous research has found that both children and adults with reading difficulty display areas of compromised white matter.

http://www.physorg.com/news179584529.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121253104

Pre-school exercises can prevent dyslexia

A study comparing 107 children with either parent dyslexic and a control group of children without a hereditary predisposition to dyslexia has found that half the children with a dyslexic parent found learning to read more challenging than children in the control group. The predictors of reading and writing difficulties were evident primarily in two contexts: as a delayed ability to perceive and mentally process the subtleties of speech sound, and as a sluggishness in naming familiar, visually presented objects. The difficulties children experience when learning to read can be significantly reduced through training, and the CoE in Learning and Motivation Research has developed computer game-like learning environments to aid preventive training, and made them available on the internet free of charge. It’s recommended that the child start these exercises before school, if possible.  The exercises and tools are all available at www.lukimat.fi.

The results were presented at the Academy of Finland's science breakfast on 21 August.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/aof-pae082708.php

Remedial instruction can close gap between good, poor readers

A brain imaging study of poor readers has found that 100 hours of remedial instruction not only improved the skills of struggling readers, but also changed the way their brains activated when they comprehended written sentences. 25 fifth-graders who were poor readers worked in groups of three for an hour a day with a reading "personal trainer," a teacher specialized in administering a remedial reading program. The training included both word decoding exercises in which students were asked to recognize the word in its written form and tasks in using reading comprehension strategies. Brain scans while the children were reading revealed that the parietotemporal region — responsible for decoding the sounds of written language and assembling them into words and phrases that make up a sentence — was significantly less activated among the poor readers than in the control group. The increases in activation seen as a result of training were still evident, and even greater, a year later.
Although dyslexia is generally thought of as caused by difficulties in the visual perception of letters, leading to confusions between letters like "p" and "d", such difficulties occur in only about 10% of the cases. Most commonly, the problem lies in relating the visual form of a letter to its sound.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/cmu-cmb061108.php

Having right timing 'connections' in brain is key to overcoming dyslexia

New research has found that key areas for language and working memory involved in reading are connected differently in dyslexics than in children who are good readers and spellers. But, after the children with dyslexia went through a three-week instructional program, their patterns of functional brain connectivity normalized and were similar to those of good readers. The study looked specifically at activity in the left and right inferior front gyrus. The left inferior front gyrus may control the communication between the different areas involved in language, especially spoken language, while the right is thought to be involved in controlling the processing of letters in written words. Prior to the treatment these two areas were overconnected in the dyslexics, and the left inferior frontal gyrus also was overconnected to the middle frontal gyrus, which is involved in working memory that requires temporal coordination. It is not yet known how long the improvement in connectivity is maintained.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-09/uow-hrt090407.php
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09116044

New insight into brain and speech promises help for learning disabilities

Following a new understanding of the nature of certain language dysfunctions, researchers have devised a new non-invasive diagnostic tool called BioMAP that can quickly identify children with a subset of learning disabilities that results from a dysfunction in the way the brainstem encodes certain basic sounds of speech. Such children accounted for nearly a third of the language-disordered children the researchers studied. BioMAP measures whether a child's nervous system can accurately translate a sound wave into a brain wave. If it cannot, the affected individual demonstrates problems in discriminating speech sounds that interfere with normal learning. Once identified, children with these problems will be able to improve their speech discrimination skills through auditory training.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/nu-nii040405.php

Promise for helping adults with dyslexia

Recent studies have demonstrated that children with dyslexia can benefit from programs aimed at “retraining” the brain. Now a new study shows that adults with dyslexia can also benefit from tutoring in processing words, and their brains show changes that indicate neural modifications due to the training.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/cp-pfh102204.php

Immature motion pathways in the brain associated with poor reading skills

An interactive computer game called MovingToRead (MTR) has significantly improved reading skills in poor second-grade readers within three months by practicing left-right movement discrimination for 5 to 10 minutes once or twice a week. It has been suggested that immature motion pathways — the circuit of neurons that helps readers determine the location of letters of a word and words on a page — may be related to reading problems in children. The therapy appears to be most effective with second-graders (age 7).

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-11/sfn-ssb111103.php

Short-term dyslexia treatment strengthens key brain regions

A group of dyslexic children and a group of good readers of the same age underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map their brain activation patterns during two types of reading tests. Both groups of children were found to use the same specific parts of their brains to perform the reading tasks, however, the activation of these regions was much weaker in the dyslexic children. The children with dyslexia then received a three-week training program based on principles outlined by the National Reading Panel (http://www.nationalreadingpanel.org). After this program the levels of brain activation were found to be essentially the same in the two groups.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-07/aaon-sdt071503.php
More background on dyslexia including initial steps toward identifying it in a child, how it may be treated, and additional resources can be found in Neurology's "Patient Page" at http://www.neurology.org.