I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this topic before, but I haven’t successfully located the entry, so I’m revisiting the topic. I thought of the topic while reading a note by Alex Rodriguez in his blog, Yabba Yabba. Mr. Rodriguez commented on research showing that there are changes in the blood flow in children’s brains following training.
I read an article by a team of researches, that used a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining (FMRI) machine to look at the blood flow in the regions of the brain they thought were responsible for Dyslexia. Following on from earlier research, they found that the when children used the Fast ForWord Language training program, the ability of the readers with Dyslexia improved.
I, too, find the news about changes in fMRI profiles following intervention to be welcome news. Although the effects reported by the Fast Forward folks are intriguing, I find even more compelling the data from other labs where the researchers actually teach people to read and observe changes in fMRI data. It seems much more beneficial to me to teach reading and get the concomitant changes in blood flow than to promote some other behaviors that are possibly related to reading and get similar concomitant changes. Here are references to a few studies illustrating this phenomenon.
Aylward, E. H., Richards, T. L., Berninger, V. W., Nagy, W. E., Field, K. M., Grimme A. C. et al. (2003). Instructional treatment associated with changes in brain activation in children with dyslexia. Neurology, 22, 212-219.
Shaywitz, B. A., Shaywitz, S .E., Blachman, B., Pugh, K .R., Fulbright, R .K., Skudlarski, P., Mencl, W .E., Constable, R .T., Holahan, J .M., Marchione, K .E., Fletcher, J .M., Lyon, G .R., & Gore, J .C. (2004). Development of left occipitotemporal systems for skilled reading children after a phonologically-based intervention. Biological Psychiatry, 55, 926-933.
Simos, P .G., Fletcher, J .M., Bergman, E., Breier, J .I., Foorman, B .R., Castillo, E .M., Fitzgerald, M., & Papanicolaou, A .C. (2002). Dyslexia-specific brain activation profile becomes normal following successful remedial training. Neurology, 58, 1203-1213
One of my favorite thoughts about these results is how they turn on it’s head what I think is the popular conception that behavior is a result of brain activity. It’s looking to me like brain activity is the result of behavior.
Link to Mr. Rodreguez’ entry. By the way, in his post Mr. Rodriguez mentions brain surgery as a means of affecting blood flow; I’d opt for teaching reading as an alternative.
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