...more than just keepsakes. pictures were something to show those kids back at school and tell them: "You can call me 'dummy,' you can call me 'dyslexic,' but I'm rewiring my brain. What have you done for yours lately?"

Elise Temple had just arrived at Cornell, as a newly appointed assistant professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology, when the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (March 2003) published her work--conducted as a graduate student at Stanford--that changed the way neuroscientists and educators think about developmental dyslexia. Although all the causes for severe difficulties in learning to read were yet to be explained, Temple and her research colleagues found a way to track treatment for dyslexia. Temple's widely hailed experiment with fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scans of the brains of children with dyslexia--before and after remedial training when the children learned to associate vowels and consonants with English language sounds--showed that specific regions of the brain become more active as the children begin to learn to read.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Even more interesting to neuroscientists, the children with dyslexia were using different parts of their brains--in the right side--compared to children with good reading skills, as their language skills and reading performance improved.

Functional MRI highlights brain activity by proxy, by looking for changes in blood oxygenation when particular neurons become more active. The fMRI scans of kids with dyslexia learning to read also detected some activity in the left side of the brain (specifically, the left temporo-parietal cortex and left inferior frontal gynus), but not as much activity as normal-reading children show in that region. The surprising finding was that children with dyslexia displayed activity in "mirror" regions of the right brain (the right-hemisphere frontal and temporal regions and anterior cingulate gynus) that normal-reading children rarely use. Before their training sessions,...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from Human Ecology
Students take top awards in textile digital print and product design c..., November 01, 2006
'Go Figure!' web site lets kids see how they rate.(Charlotte Coffman)(..., November 01, 2006
New Ph.D. combines Law, Psychology, and Human Development.(Brief artic..., November 01, 2006

Looking for additional articles?
Search our database of over 3 million articles.

Looking for more in-depth information on this industry?
Search our complete database of Industry & Market reports by text, subject, publication name or publication date.

About Goliath
Whether you're looking for sales prospects, competitive information, company analysis or best practices in managing your organization, Goliath can help you meet your business needs.

Our extensive business information databases empower business professionals with both the breadth and depth of credible, authoritative information they need to support their business goals. Whether it be strategic planning, sales prospecting, company research or defining management best practices - Goliath is your leading source for accurate information.