This explains some of the underpinnings of how Behavioral Optometry
works. This is some of the theory of what individuals like Slomovic
and Lederman have been doing for decades
Kol Tuv
Nachum

Having right timing connections in brain is key to overcoming
dyslexia
Medical Research News
5-Sep-2007

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."

The UW researchers used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or
fMRI, to explore brain connectivity. This type of imaging typically
shows which parts of the brain are activated but does not indicate
how they are connected. However, software developed by Richards, a
professor of radiology, enabled the researchers to see brain activity
in a specific region, the left inferior front gyrus. This region may
serve as the "orchestra conductor" for language. The software also
provided a look at how this brain area was connected to a similar
region in the right hemisphere. The software and the focus on
language centers allowed the researchers to collect data that was not
related to the children's heartbeat or breathing.

To explore brain connectivity, the researchers worked with 18
dyslexic children (5 girls and 13 boys) and 21 children (8 girls and
13 boys) who were good readers and spellers. All of the children were
of normal intelligence and were in the fourth through sixth grades.

The children had to judge whether groups of pink highlighted letters
in pairs of nonsense words could or could not represent the same
sound. For example, the letters ea and ee in "pleak" and "leeze"
could have the same sound but the ea and eu in "pheak" and "peuch"
could not. The children's brains were scanned and then those with
dyslexia participated in a three-week program that taught the
children the code for connecting letters and sounds with an emphasis
on timing. Then the children's brains were scanned again.

Following the treatment, the fMRI scans showed that the patterns of
temporal connectivity in brains of the dyslexic children had
normalized and were similar to those of the good readers and
spellers. In particular, the researchers found that connectivity
appeared to be normal between the left inferior frontal gyrus and the
right inferior frontal gyrus. The left inferior frontal gyrus is
believed to control the functional language system, especially for
spoken words, while the right inferior frontal gyrus may be involved
in controlling the processing of letters in written words. Prior to
the treatment these two areas were overconnected and the left
inferior frontal gyrus also was overconnected to the middle frontal
gyrus, which is involved in working memory that requires temporal
coordination.

"These results might mean that after special teaching the children
with dyslexia activated letters in written words first and then
switched to sounds in spoken words rather than simultaneously
activating both letters and sounds," said Richards. "The
overconnection between the language conductor and working memory at
the same time may be a signal that working memory is overtaxed. When
language processing is more efficient after treatment, working memory
does not have to work as hard.

"There is this myth that English is an irregular language," added
Berninger. "That's not true. We have a set of alternative ways of
spelling the same sounds but this not taught explicitly. The way
phonics is often taught over focuses on single letters and not the
letter groups that go with sounds as well. Teaching children with
dyslexia to read requires a different approach, one that stresses
knowledge of spelling-sound relationships with a twist that tweaks
the letter and sound processes to get connected in time in the
brain."

The researchers caution that the intervention treatment is not a cure
for dyslexia. They said it makes children better readers during
specialized instruction, but has not been proven over a long period
of time, something they hope to do in the future. "We have shown that
gains can maintain for up to two years with behavior measures, but
much research is needed before it can be demonstrated that functional
brain connectivity can be maintained," said Berninger.

http://www.uwnews.org/