Teaching changes minds

The University of Washington group studying dyslexia reported results from yet another study indicating that instruction reprograms neural activity.

Using new software developed to investigate how the brains of dyslexic children are organized, University of Washington researchers have 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.

However, once the children with dyslexia received a three-week instructional program, their patterns of functional brain connectivity normalized and were similar to those of good readers when deciding if sounds went with groups of letters in words.

“Some brain regions are too strongly connected functionally in children with dyslexia when they are deciding which sounds go with which letters,” said Todd Richards, a UW neuroimaging scientist and lead author of a study published in the current issue of the Journal of Neurolinguistics. “We had hints in previous studies that the ability to decode novel words improves when a specific brain region in the right hemisphere decreases in activation. This study suggests that the deactivation may result in a disconnection in time from the comparable region in the left hemisphere, which in turn leads to improved reading. Reading requires sequential as well as simultaneous processes.”

Richards and co-author Virginia Berninger, a neuropsychologist, said temporal connectivity, or the ability of different parts of the brain to “talk” with each other at the same time or in sequence, is a key in overcoming dyslexia.

Berninger, who directs the UW’s Learning Disabilities Center, compared dyslexia to an orchestra playing with an ineffective conductor who does not keep all the musicians playing in synchrony with each other.

“You have all of the correct instruments but, if the conductor is not doing his or her job of coordination, the right instruments are playing at the wrong time,” she said. “This all goes away once the conductor finds a way to signal to the musicians to play at the proper times.”

Link to the press release from which I quoted. Links to some earlier entries about other similar research findings reported here on LD Blog: Brain Follows Behavior, More Brain Effects, Still More Brain Effects

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