Reading difficulties and the brain?

Greetings JD,

Dr. Amen (brainplace.com) links learning problems, especially reading and auditory processing, to the temporal lobe. According to Dr. Amen in his book entitled Healing ADD, he states (pp. 114-115), “On the dominant side of the brain (the left side for most people), the temporal lobes are intimately involved with understanding and processing language, intermediate- and long-term memory, complex memories, the retrieval of language or words, emotional stability, and visual and auditory processing.” (p. 116) “Being able to read in an efficient manner, remember what you read, and integrate the new information relies heavily on the dominant temporal lobe. Problems here contribute to language struggles, miscommunication, and reading disabilities.”

Blessings, momo

This evidence is cropping up all over the place. I cannot direct you to everything you need, however you may want to conduct a search using the name Shaywitz (Dr. who has done imaging research of RD). The other day I was visiting International Dyslexia site. There is a page on their site about research or research awards, the next page will bring you to current year awards and you can scroll down to past year awards and select. There are several briefs in there dealing with brain functions. I recently found, by searching on the internet, an article explaining how the visual processing problem works in the brain. I don’t think I saved the article. However, as I have read these various articles implicating brain anomolies in several places of the brain to reading difficulties, I am even more convinced that we must have specialized instruction and that (while we can teach these students to read) we may never “catch up” those who manifest multiple processing issues. I am thinking of the classic phonological processing difficulties, sequential processing issues, memory issues, speeded naming issues………… The more we can learn, in detail, the more we will probably be able to learn about methodology and remediation. But, alas, I suppose we will always have those parents who, despite significant and multiple processing disabilities, still expect the resource teacher to be able to catch their child up to grade level. And, as a parent, I understand how necessary it is to have hope. As a teacher I know I can help these students significantly, but I have not successfully fixed all the difficulties they have (of course I wish I had). Good luck in your search. This is a fascinating topic.

Here’s a most informative article posted in the Reading category of “LD in Depth”.

http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/reading/biobasis.html

Yours truly,
Kathy G.