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  • Dyslexia Gene is Carried by 15% of the Population - Reading ability in the general population may be influenced by a gene linked to dyslexia, a new study shows. At least six genes have been identified that might be involved in dyslexia. Now new findings from a study of more than 6,000 British children aged seven to nine have indicated that faulty KIAA0319 may reduce general reading ability in people not suffering from dyslexia.
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  • Stress Among School-aged Dyslexic Children - Dyslexic children in Grades 3-5 were found to experience high levels of stress, particularly with regard to interacting with teachers and school tests. Dyslexic children in larger families (3-4 siblings) also experienced greater stress than dyslexic children in smaller families (two siblings), possibly from unfair subling comparison.
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  • Springboard for Children - A ground-breaking project which has had extraordinary success in helping hundreds of dyslexic children and others struggling to read and write at primary school is poised for a major expansion across Britain. Springboard for Children, an education charity which now has the enthusiastic backing of the British Dyslexia Association, has achieved a 90 per cent success rate in returning children with severe literacy problems to mainstream classrooms. The revolutionary scheme is being used in a dozen schools in Manchester and London, and the plan is now to set the scheme up in ten other inner-city areas – bringing a lifeline to around 10,000 children suffering from dyslexia and other difficulties with reading and writing. The Springboard project relies on intense one-on-one tuition for up to two years, during which a host of innovative techniques are employed to improve the child's skills. Details
    
    
    
    
  • Yale to Use $5M for Dyslexia Genetics Studies - The Yale School of Medicine has landed a $5.2 million foundation grant to conduct a large genomics study that will investigate genes involved in dyslexia. The long-term goal of the research, which is supported by a grant from the Manton Foundation, will be to develop a gene-based diagnostic test for dyslexia that could help catch the disease earlier in life and enable children to gain the benefits of accessing specialized reading treatments sooner.
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  • Dyslexia Linked to Muscle Control - Dyslexia could be caused by defects in the part of the brain that controls muscle co-ordination, Edinburgh scientists have discovered. Edinburgh University scientists have found the cerebellum, at the base of the brain, may influence how a person learns to interpret written language. The scientists compared brain scans of people with dyslexia with those of people without the condition. Dyslexic patients fell into two main categories, those with an enlarged area in the cerebellum and those with a smaller area than normal.
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  • Dyslexics in the Classroom - Last summer, we conducted some in-depth research into public attitudes to dyslexia. I'm afraid to say the results were not encouraging. One of the astonishing things we discovered was that 75% of the population claim to understand little or nothing about how dyslexic people think.

    With dyslexic thinkers making up an estimated 10% of the population, most people have either a friend, loved-one, relative, colleague or client with dyslexia. So why are we so in the dark about how dyslexics think?
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  • Risks Raised for Young with Dyslexia - Young people with dyslexia may be at greater risk of getting hurt on the job, according to a new study from the Toronto-based Institute for Work and Health (IWH). 'The early indicators are that dyslexia contributes to higher injury rates among young workers,' said IWH's Dr Curtis Breslin, who led the study.
    
    'It could be that the particular problems with reading, spelling and writing that characterise dyslexia make it more difficult to understand and remember safety training or contribute to poor supervisor-worker communications.' The study, published in the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health, is one of the first to look at the relationship between learning disabilities, ADHD and job injury rates among young people.
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  • Dyslexia: a New Synergy Between Education and Cognitive Neuroscience - Reading is essential in modern societies, but many children have dyslexia, a difficulty in learning to read. Dyslexia often arises from impaired phonological awareness, the auditory analysis of spoken language that relates the sounds of language to print. Behavioral remediation, especially at a young age, is effective for many, but not all, children.
    
    Neuroimaging in children with dyslexia has revealed reduced engagement of the left temporo-parietal cortex for phonological processing of print, altered white-matter connectivity, and functional plasticity associated with effective intervention. Behavioral and brain measures identify infants and young children at risk for dyslexia, and preventive intervention is often effective. A combination of evidence-based teaching practices and cognitive neuroscience measures could prevent dyslexia from occurring in the majority of children who would otherwise develop dyslexia.
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  • Gene Associated with Language, Speech and Reading Disorders Identified - A new candidate gene for Specific Language Impairment has been identified by a research team directed at the University of Kansas. A gene on Chromosome 6 – KIAA0319 – was associated with variability in language abilities in a study of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and their family members, as well as with variability in speech and reading abilities. Children with SLI who were selected for the study had no hearing loss, general intellectual deficit or autism.
    
    Language ability involves vocabulary and grammar, whereas speech involves the accuracy of sound production. Both language and speech ability contribute to a child's ability to read. The finding that a candidate gene could influence all three abilities suggests a common pathway that could contribute to overlapping strengths or deficiencies across speech, language and reading.
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  • Dyslexia More Complex in Chinese - Dyslexia may be more complex in children speaking Chinese than English, University of Hong Kong researchers said. In Chinese dyslexia, disordered phonological processing may coexist with abnormal visuopatial processing.
    In the study, scans showed activation in a portion of the brain known to mediate visuospatial processing was weaker in those with dyslexia than in the normal readers.
    "Written Chinese maps graphic forms - characters - onto meanings; Chinese characters possess a number of intricate strokes packed into a square configuration, and their pronunciations must be memorized by rote," the researchers said in a statement. "This characteristic suggests that a fine-grained visuospatial analysis must be performed by the visual system in order to activate the characters' phonological and semantic information."
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  • Dyslexia and the Reading Brain - All of us are born with brains that are designed to think and talk. But no one is born with a brain that is designed to read. For that reason, every child who learns to read is adapting older brain structures to a new purpose, and "it's almost a miracle that so many kids are able to do that effortlessly".
    
    She said in an interview last week that fluent readers create a new reading circuit in the left half of their brains, using areas hard-wired for hearing, vision, speech, memory and cognition. For some children, though, this task is extraordinarily difficult, and brain imaging studies have shown that many of them end up using the right half of their brains for reading tasks, even though it isn't ideally suited for that purpose.
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  • Are Weak Eye Muscles Holding Your Child Back at School? - There are all sorts of reasons for learning difficulties, but for some children - perhaps as many as 400,000 in the UK - the problem lies with the way their eyes work. If the muscles around the eyes are weak, the eyes won't work as a co-ordinated pair. This makes it difficult to focus clearly on something as small as the printed words on a page. Now a new campaign has been launched to alert parents and teachers to the fact that sight problems can be an issue for children with dyslexia and other learning difficulties. The good news is treatment from an orthoptist, an eye specialist who deals with focusing problems, could improve their vision dramatically.
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  • Unraveling Dyslexic Brains - Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle are making strides understanding how dyslexic brains work. Developmental neuropsychologist Virginia Berninger, Ph.D., and neurophysicist Todd Richards, Ph.D., lead a team of researchers whose studies have shown that the brains of children with dyslexia work about five times harder than other children's brains when performing the same language task. You think you're tired at the end of a school day? Imagine if your brain had to work five times harder!
    
    
    
    
  • Vouchers Don't Help Disabled Students - About 77 percent of private schools taking tax dollars to educate disabled students don't offer special classes for disabled children. A Palm Beach Post examination of the 641 private schools taking McKay vouchers in Florida found that 496 reported on a state Department of Education form that they do not have classes "specifically designed to meet the needs of children with exceptionalities." At The Foundation Academy in Jacksonville, for example, about 70 of the school's 240 students use McKay vouchers, mostly for learning disabilities. But the school's teachers are not certified in Florida to teach special education -- they aren't Florida-certified to teach at all, although they do have college degrees.
    
    
    
    
  • Controversial Therapy Lacks Research Basis - A recent statement from the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) in response to a "60 Minutes II" TV item on dyslexia (USA, Wednesday, October 22) had heavily criticized the DDAT/Dore program of exercises for dyslexic children:
    
    The method of treatment or intervention promoted by Mr. Dore (repetitive physical activity, balancing exercises, etc.) is predicated on research that has been questioned by many neuroscientists (Zeffiro, Eden, Ivry, Justus, Snowling, Hulme, Singleton, and Stuart). Unfortunately, that reality was not shared with the viewing audience. Several studies from well-respected research institutions (Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, etc.) indicate that the dyslexic brain functions differently than the non-dyslexic brain. While there is growing acceptance that the cerebellum may play a greater role than previously thought in higher-level cognitive processes, there is surely no consensus in the scientific community that an intervention for dyslexia may yet be credibly based on cerebellar theories. It is IDA's position that interventions such as Mr. Dore's are simply not supported by current knowledge.