Learning Breakthrough

Background: Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) does not feature in mainstream diagnostic classifications such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition (DSM-IV), but is frequently diagnosed in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and is becoming more frequently diagnosed in the United Kingdom.

Aims: To familiarize readers with current controversies surrounding APD, with an emphasis on how APD might be conceptualized in relation to language and reading problems, attentional problems and autistic spectrum disorders.
Methods & Procedures: Different conceptual and diagnostic approaches adopted by audiologists and psychologists can lead to a confusing picture whereby the child who is regarded as having a specific learning disability by one group of experts may be given an APD diagnosis by another. While this could be indicative of co-morbidity, there are concerns that different professional groups are using different labels for the same symptoms.
Conclusions & Implications: APD, as currently diagnosed, is not a coherent category, but that rather than abandoning the construct, we need to develop improved methods for assessment and diagnosis, with a focus on interdisciplinary evaluation.

When we exercise our brains, we put our Neurons and connections between neurons in action.

Given the diversity of functions outlined above, it is clear that different activities are going to activate different brain areas, which scientists now know thanks to neuroimaging techniques. There is no one magic bullet that is best (either crosswords puzzles, or computer-based programs, or physical exercise): we do need a variety of mental stimulation or “brain exercises”.

A newly published article by the Department of Neurology, Division of Cognitive Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine outlines another look into the role the cerebellum plays in language development and cognition. There are many researchers investigating this part of the brain that is so deeply involved in movement and a huge variety of "automated" functions. The exact logic of how the brain uses all its various systems to divide and tackle the complex cognitive tasks it performs every day is still in its infancy. However, the efficiency of cerebellar functions and how it can be enhanced through calibrated neuro-motor and vestibular training is constantly being examined as a likely method of improving brain fitness generally and as a way to overcome specific learning challenges.

The entire article is available here: Functional Topography of the Cerebellum in Verbal Working Memory, with the abstract printed below for your convenience.

Abstract :

If you’re the parent of a child who’s having trouble learning or behaving in school, you quickly find yourself confronted with a series of difficult choices.

You can do nothing — and watch your child flounder while teachers register their disapproval. Or you can get help, which generally means, first, an expensive and time-consuming evaluation, then more visits with more specialists, intensive tutoring, therapies, perhaps, or, as is often the case with attention issues, drugs.

For many parents — particularly the sorts of parents who are skeptical of mainstream medicine and of the intentions of what one mother once described to me as “the learning-disability industrial complex” — this experience is an exercise in frustration and alienation.

The rest of the article describes some areas of similarity with LBP because of the program's substantial amount of vision-related activities. The balance and vestibular issues so critical to LBP are not described, but the hurdles that parents face and the ways that treatments are presented to parents, the pressures, etc. will be very strongly identified with by those who have had to walk that road.

Read the complete article on the Times website >>

From the upcoming release of A Life In Balance: Discovery of a Learning Breakthrough


The Still-Missing Core


"One of the basic principles of a two-engine airplane is the synchronicity between the two engine systems that are fixed on either side of the plane. If one engine puts out more thrust than the other, it causes problems in flight. If the disparity is sufficiently severe, it can cause the plane to go out of control and crash. Remembering this principle caused an idea to begin to percolate: was the issue these children were experiencing related to the balance between the two sides of their bodies?"