People with dyslexia often struggle with the ability to accurately decode and identify what they read. Although disrupted processing of speech sounds has been implicated in the underlying pathology of dyslexia, the basis of this disruption and how it interferes with reading comprehension has not been fully explained. Now, new research published by Cell Press in the December 22 issue of the journal Neuron finds that a specific abnormality in the processing of auditory signals accounts for the main symptoms of dyslexia.

“It is widely agreed that for a majority of dyslexic children, the main cause is related to a deficit in the processing of speech sounds,” explains senior study author, Dr. Anne-Lise Giraud and Franck Ramus from the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, France. “It is also well established that there are three main symptoms of this deficit: difficulty paying attention to individual speech sounds, a limited ability to repeat a list of pseudowords or numbers, and a slow performance when asked to name a series of pictures, colors, or numbers as quickly as possible. However, the underlying basis of these symptoms has not been elucidated.”

Dr. Giraud and colleagues examined whether an abnormality in the early steps of auditory processing in the brain, called “sampling,” is linked with dyslexia by focusing on the idea that an anomaly in the initial processing of phonemes, the smallest units of sound that can be used to make a word, might have a direct impact on the processing of speech.

The researchers found that typical brain processing of auditory rhythms associated with phonemes was disrupted in the left auditory cortex of dyslexics and that this deficit correlated with measures of speech sound processing. Further, dyslexics exhibited an enhanced response to high-frequency rhythms that indirectly interfered with verbal memory. It is possible that this “oversampling” might result in a distortion of the representation of speech sounds.

“Our results suggest that the left auditory cortex of dyslexic people may be less responsive to modulations at very specific frequencies that are optimal for analysis of speech sounds and overly responsive to higher frequencies, which is potentially detrimental to their verbal short-term memory abilities,” concludes Dr. Giraud. “Taken together, our data suggest that the auditory cortex of dyslexic individuals is less fine-tuned to the specific needs of speech processing.”

Listen up: Abnormality in auditory processing underlies dyslexia.

Auditory Processing & Autism.

Children on the autistic spectrum can find the processing of sensory information a challenge. Research shows particularly that auditory processing can be a key factor. Auditory interventions have been used for a number of years and improvements in technology are now offering new ways of delivering sound stimulation programmes in the home to help with these underlying processing and integration difficulties.

 

Auditory Processing

Many children on the autistic spectrum have accompanying difficulties with auditory processing. These can take the form of, but are not limited to, challenges with: -

 

■          Sound sensitivities – hypersensitivity to sound can cause ‘fight or flight’ reactions meaning the system is constantly on alert.

 

■          Sound discrimination – Difficulties with the discrimination of phonemes or tone of voice can affect our comprehension of language and meaning.

 

■          Filtering out background sounds – Being able to tune out certain sounds and concentrate on others is a basic skill to aid concentration and processing.

 

■          Temporal processing – Understanding the timing and pattern of sound is vital to our understanding rhythm and language.

 

■          Auditory cohesion – A higher-level task helping us to understand the meaning and subtlety of communication.

 

The interaction of the different senses is now becoming more understood and accepted. It is known that we can use visual stimulus to affect auditory and other systems. Similarly auditory stimulus can be used to affect the integration of information of the auditory and other internal systems. It is perhaps more useful to talk about ‘sensory processing’ rather than ‘auditory processing’ alone. Individuals on the autistic spectrum can have hypo or hyper sensitivities to a range of stimulus. Many instinctively know what stimulus their system requires and self stimulate by rocking, humming, eating dirt and grass or covering their ears to avoid certain auditory stimulation. Sleep patterns, social skills, emotional outbursts and many other areas can be affected.

 

Sound Stimulation and Dr. Alfred Tomatis

The field of sound stimulation began in the 1950’s with the work of the French ENT specialist, Dr Alfred Tomatis. He recognised the importance sound plays in terms of the integration and development of our whole system. Developing the theory that different functions of the body relate to different sound frequency bands he worked with acoustically modified sound as a therapeutic tool to help many individuals with sensory processing, language and comprehension challenges.

 

The Listening Program®

In 1997 a multidisciplinary team began working to develop a sound stimulation programme using the most advanced acoustic techniques available. Drawn from the fields of neurodevelopment, music, medicine, speech and lan0067uage therapy, sound therapy and audio engineering, The Listening Program (TLP) Classic Kit was launched in 1999. Many autistic individuals have experienced gains in many areas since the launch of the Classic Kit. Improvements in sleep patterns, sound sensitivities, language development, social skills and attention have been seen amongst others.

 

New Developments

The team behind TLP have continued to develop the field of sound stimulation and the new TLP Level One Kit offers advancements to particularly help with areas of sound discrimination, temporal processing and auditory attention.

 

The new advancements include recording in High Definition and the use of Spatial Surround™ sound with dynamic movement. This allows a listener to experience the highest available quality of sound in a 360° soundfield with individual instrument recording. This level of technology allows for gentle and powerful training of many of the auditory skills that autistic individuals find challenging.

 

One 6 year old autistic boy benefiting from TLP at present is Tom Sherlock.

 

Tom has been on the Son-Rise™ programme since the age of 3 and has made progress. He began TLP in June 2006 and also took a short course of TLP Bone Conduction for 2 weeks. He then began listening at home to TLP Level One which is an initial 10 week programme of listening. His Mum, Jackie, comments as follows: -

 

“Our six year old son Tom has now been listening to The Listening Programme for 8 months and we have seen some wonderful changes in him.

 

His interactive attention span is now much longer, he used to be very ‘flitty’ with tasks and games and is now much more attentive for longer periods of time.

 

This has also helped his ability to hold a conversation and we now have lengthy conversations about all kinds of topics, now he has such a huge appetite for knowledge that we have had to buy him a children’s encyclopaedia!

 

He has for the first time shown interest in reading and writing, which he was never motivated by before.  He knows all his alphabet and is now reading words!

 

Also as a result of his listening we have discovered he has a fantastic memory and can relate names and stories that have been shared with him days and weeks before.

 

Tom enjoys his listening time and there is never a difficulty in encouraging Tom to do his listening and for us that speaks volumes.  One thing we have learnt from Tom, is that he is our best teacher in terms of what is good and works for him and we know he is getting huge benefits from The Listening Program”.

 

With other autistic children improvements in sleep patterns and a more relaxed and calm attitude will be apparent. Improvements in eye contact and social skills, language awareness, attention and concentration are also often seen.

 

A huge benefit for a sound stimulation programme is that TLP is a home-based programme and can easily be combined with any other type of remediation programme. Of course, for many autistic individuals the possibility of listening to the programme in their own familiar surroundings is important.

 

TLP is only available through the network of trained Providers who are experienced in developing an individual listening schedule for the particular needs and sensitivities of the listener. A schedule of 15 – 30 minutes per day for 5 days each week is followed and a typical family will invest from around £350 in the programme itself. Providers will charge relatively low fees to help develop and monitor each programme of listening, keeping in regular touch throughout the process. More intensive bone conduction options are also available.

 

To learn more about The Listening Program, view case studies and research see www.thelisteningprogram.com

 

Alan Heath

Alan is the UK trainer for The Listening Program®, an accredited Brain Gym® Instructor and NLP Practitioner. He works extensively in schools in the UK and internationally, training teachers in Auditory Processing, Accelerated Learning and Brain Gym. He is the author of ‘Beating Dyslexia A Natural Way’ published in 1997 and runs a consultancy service for children with a range of learning and sensory difficulties. More details of his work can be found at www.learning-solutions.co.uk

 

How the Brain Strings Words Into Sentences

How the brain strings words into sentences.

Using magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, researchers can visualize the two main language processing regions, Broca’s region (yellow) and Wernicke’s region (purple). (Credit: Stephen Wilson)

ScienceDaily (Nov. 28, 2011) — Distinct neural pathways are important for different aspects of language processing, researchers have discovered, studying patients with language impairments caused by neurodegenerative diseases.

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While it has long been recognized that certain areas in the brain’s left hemisphere enable us to understand and produce language, scientists are still figuring out exactly how those areas divvy up the highly complex processes necessary to comprehend and produce language.

Advances in brain imaging made within the last 10 years have revealed that highly complex cognitive tasks such as language processing rely not only on particular regions of the cerebral cortex, but also on the white matter fiber pathways that connect them.

“With this new technology, scientists started to realize that in the language network, there are a lot more connecting pathways than we originally thought,” said Stephen Wilson, who recently joined the University of Arizona’s department of speech, language and hearing sciences as an assistant professor. “They are likely to have different functions because the brain is not just a homogeneous conglomerate of cells, but there hasn’t been a lot of evidence as to what kind of information is carried on the different pathways.”

Working in collaboration with his colleagues at the UA, the department of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco and the Scientific Institute and University Hospital San Raffaele in Milan, Italy, Wilson discovered that not only are the connecting pathways important for language processing, but they specialize in different tasks.

Two brain areas called Broca’s region and Wernicke’s region serve as the main computing hubs underlying language processing, with dense bundles of nerve fibers linking the two, much like fiber optic cables connecting computer servers. But while it was known that Broca’s and Wernicke’s region are connected by upper and a lower white matter pathways, most research had focused on the nerve cells clustered inside the two language-processing regions themselves.

Working with patients suffering from language impairments because of a variety of neurodegenerative diseases, Wilsons’ team used brain imaging and language tests to disentangle the roles played by the two pathways. Their findings are published in a recent issue of the scientific journal Neuron.

“If you have damage to the lower pathway, you have damage to the lexicon and semantics,” Wilson said. “You forget the name of things, you forget the meaning of words. But surprisingly, you’re extremely good at constructing sentences.”

“With damage to the upper pathway, the opposite is true; patients name things quite well, they know the words, they can understand them, they can remember them, but when it comes to figuring out the meaning of a complex sentence, they are going to fail.”

The study marks the first time it has been shown that upper and lower tracts play distinct functional roles in language processing, the authors write. Only the upper pathway plays a critical role in syntactic processing.

Wilson collected the data while he was a postdoctoral fellow working with patients with neurodegenerative diseases of varying severity, recruited through the Memory and Aging Center at UCSF. The study included 15 men and 12 women around the age of 66.

Unlike many other studies investigating acquired language disorders, which are called aphasias and usually caused by damage to the brain, Wilson’s team had a unique opportunity to study patients with very specific and variable degrees of brain damage.

“Most aphasias are caused by strokes, and most of the strokes that affect language regions probably would affect both pathways,” Wilson said. “In contrast, the patients with progressive aphasias who we worked with had very rare and very specific neurodegenerative diseases that selectively target different brain regions, allowing us to tease apart the contributions of the two pathways.”

To find out which of the two nerve fiber bundles does what in language processing, the team combined magnetic resonance brain imaging technology to visualize damaged areas and language assessment tasks testing the participants’ ability to comprehend and produce sentences.

“We would give the study participants a brief scenario and ask them to complete it with what comes naturally,” Wilson said. “For example, if I said to you, ‘A man was walking along the railway tracks. He didn’t hear the train coming. What happened to the man?’ Usually, you would say, ‘He was hit by the train,’ or something along those lines.”

“But a patient with damage to the upper pathway might say something like ‘train, man, hit.’ We found that the lower pathway has a completely different function, which is in the meaning of single words.”

To test for comprehension of the meaning of a sentence, the researchers presented the patient with a sentence like, “The girl who is pushing the boy is green,” and then ask which of the two pictures depicted that scenario accurately.

“One picture would show a green girl pushing a boy, and the other would show a girl pushing a green boy,” Wilson said. “The colors will be the same, the agents will be the same, and the action is the same. The only difference is, which actor does the color apply to?”

“Those who have only lower pathway damage do really well on this, which shows that damage to that pathway doesn’t interfere with your ability to use the little function words or the functional endings on words to figure out the relationships between the words in a sentence.”

Wilson said that most previous studies linking neurodegeneration of specific regions with cognitive deficits have focused on damage to gray matter, rather than the white matter that connects regions to one another.

“Our study shows that the deficits in the ability to process sentences are above and beyond anything that could be explained by gray matter loss alone,” Wilson added. “It is the first study to show that damage to one major pathway more than then other major pathway is associated with a specific deficit in one aspect of language.”

The study was primarily funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and included the following co-authors: Sebastian Galantucci, Maria Carmela Tartaglia, Kindle Rising, Dianne Patterson (both at the UA’s department of speech, language and hearing sciences), Maya Henry, Jennifer Ogar, Jessica DeLeon, Bruce Miller and Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Arizona. The original article was written by Daniel Stolte, University Communications.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Stephen M. Wilson, Sebastiano Galantucci, Maria Carmela Tartaglia, Kindle Rising, Dianne K. Patterson, Maya L. Henry, Jennifer M. Ogar, Jessica DeLeon, Bruce L. Miller, Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini. Syntactic Processing Depends on Dorsal Language Tracts. Neuron, 2011; 72 (2): 397 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2011.09.014

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University of Arizona (2011, November 28). How the brain strings words into sentences. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 29, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2011/11/111128171220.htm

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Independent speech and language therapist Elaine Giles hears too many rumblings in the classroom

One of my friends was having a birthday party at Wagamama recently. In case you don’t know, it’s one of those Japanese-style restaurants, a minimalist environment with no soft furnishings. It looked attractive, but I had to lip-read and strain across the table to decipher what people were saying. It was exhausting. Luckily, we don’t expect children to learn in an environment like Wagamama. Or do we?

50 per cent of schools tested do not meet current acoustic guidelines, according to a recent campaign by the National Deaf Children’s Society, who are concerned that few authorities test, monitor or regulate acoustics, and that new building programmes are ignoring current standards.

Echoic surroundings are commonplace in big, old Victorian schools with high ceilings and huge glass windows, and in sports halls and swimming pools. In studies of inner city schools, the background noise, even at night, has been found to be louder than a teacher’s speaking voice (65 to 70 decibels). No wonder teachers are the professionals most likely to develop hoarse voices!

I know of a six-year-old girl with “normal hearing” who burst into tears when she first saw “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” written down, as she had always heard it as “Dwindle, Dwindle…”. In her school the louder vowel sounds reverberated too strongly on the hard surfaces and masked the consonant sounds.

Young children cannot fill the missing gaps in unclear or fragmented speech in the same way that adults can. If it’s hard for those with normal hearing, consider the six to ten per cent of children in mainstream school with auditory processing difficulties, or the up to 50 per cent with speech, language or communication difficulties in primary school. These groups are likely to include pupils with dyslexia, dyspraxia, attention deficit disorder and/or autistic spectrum disorder, as well as the precocious talkers/readers with, for example, Asperger’s syndrome.

Unfortunately, misleading reassurances of normal hearing are often given following routine hearing assessments, which do not measure speech perception, just pure tones. But in reality, these children may need the teachers voice to be fifteen to twenty decibels louder than the background noise, often already at 60 to 65 Decibels. Indeed, the Disability Discrimination Act 2004 requires this. Is it so surprising, then, that a shocking 80 per cent of those identified as having significant communication or literacy difficulties in primary school, still have significant difficulties at secondary school? Poor acoustics may not be the cause of their difficulties, but boy, can they make a difference!

So, if you know children whose drawings are age appropriate, who pay attention, at least to topics which interest them, but who fatigue easily, and who aren’t making progress with learning language, social skills, rhymes, phonics, or reading, the chances are, they just might not be hearing speech well enough. For example, to hear the difference between the sounds b,d and g, we have to hear chords with pitch sweeps lasting only 40 milliseconds.

Whilst my ideals of screening children for cognitive, auditory and visual abilities at school entry, and reducing all class sizes, are unlikely to become reality for decades, there are simple ways we can help now. Children should be encouraged to let us know when they haven’t heard or understood, and adults should model this for children, using phrases such as “I am sorry, I can’t hear. Please say that again”. Alternating groups’ turns for speaking tasks within a class can reduce the number of people speaking at any one time. Asking the speaker to come to the front to address the class can help the children who need the visual support from lip reading, who should be sitting at the front. Visual support, in the form of pictures, photos, drawings or mind maps can also make a huge difference.

Article first published in SEN Magazine issue 44: January/February 2010.

 

Making Sense of Listening: The IMAP Test Battery

http://www.jove.com/Details.stp?ID=2139

The ability to hear is only the first step towards making sense of the range of information contained in an auditory signal. Of equal importance are the abilities to extract and use the information encoded in the auditory signal. We refer to these as listening skills (or auditory processing AP). Deficits in these skills are associated with delayed language and literacy development, though the nature of the relevant deficits and their causal connection with these delays is hotly debated.

When a child is referred to a health professional with normal hearing and unexplained difficulties in listening, or associated delays in language or literacy development, they should ideally be assessed with a combination of psychoacoustic (AP) tests, suitable for children and for use in a clinic, together with cognitive tests to measure attention, working memory, IQ, and language skills. Such a detailed examination needs to be relatively short and within the technical capability of any suitably qualified professional. Current tests for the presence of AP deficits tend to be poorly constructed and inadequately validated within the normal population. They have little or no reference to the presenting symptoms of the child, and typically include a linguistic component. Poor performance may thus reflect problems with language rather than with AP. To assist in the assessment of children with listening difficulties, pediatric audiologists need a single, standardized child-appropriate test battery based on the use of language-free stimuli.

We present the IMAP test battery which was developed at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research to supplement tests currently used to investigate cases of suspected AP deficits. IMAP assesses a range of relevant auditory and cognitive skills and takes about one hour to complete. It has been standardized in 1500 normally-hearing children from across the UK, aged 6-11 years. Since its development, it has been successfully used in a number of large scale studies both in the UK and the USA. IMAP provides measures for separating out sensory from cognitive contributions to hearing. It further limits confounds due to procedural effects by presenting tests in a child-friendly game-format. Stimulus-generation, management of test protocols and control of test presentation is mediated by the IHR-STAR software platform. This provides a standardized methodology for a range of applications and ensures replicable procedures across testers. IHR-STAR provides a flexible, user-programmable environment that currently has additional applications for hearing screening, mapping cochlear implant electrodes, and academic research or teaching.

What is dyscalculia? Learn the signs of “number blindness” and discover the steps you can take to help your child achieve academic success.

via Calculating a Response to Dyscalculia: What to Do When Your Child is “Number Blind”.

Do you know any children or adults who struggle with math? Perhaps they have difficulty with basic math skills and seem unable to understand what math process to use with which problem. Maybe they are unable to organize objects in a logical way or have difficulty with measurement of either time or money. If you know people with these types of struggles, they may have dyscalculia.

Dyscalculia, also called “number blindness” or “numerical blindness,” is a learning disability that inhibits a person’s ability to use and have a proper sense of numbers. Literally meaning “bad counting,” dyscalculia is estimated to impact three to six percent of the population so is just as prevalent as dyslexia but often goes undiagnosed since those with this disability often excel in reading and other subject areas.

Many people believe that math can be a difficult subject to teach or that some students just don’t “get it”. But for those who truly have dyscalculia, it is not about how the subject is taught; it is a lack of number sense. Two main areas of weakness may contribute to this learning disability: visual-spatial issues and language processing difficulties. With visual-spatial weaknesses, the learner has a problem processing what the eye sees so he or she may have difficulty visualizing patterns or parts of a math problem. Making sense of what the ear hears is the issue with language processing weakness which leads to a hard time grasping math vocabulary and building on math knowledge since there is a difficulty in understanding what the words represent.

Identification of any learning disability requires a trained professional who can evaluate a student to determine areas of strengths and weaknesses in learning. An in-depth assessment compares what the student’s expected level of performance is to what he or she actually can do in areas of mathematical skill and understanding. It also is helpful for at least an overview of this information to be shared with the student (especially the strengths) since knowing how you learn best is a good way to help students learn to compensate for difficulties and to build academic success and confidence.

So what can be done for those who have dyscalculia? The first step is for parents, teachers and other educational specialists to use the evaluation results to develop strategies to address the student’s math skills. Some will benefit from additional tutoring that adjusts the learning pace and focuses on specific areas of difficulty with repeated reinforcement of key skills. For those with visual-spatial weaknesses, using graph paper can be helpful for organizing ideas and for those with language processing issues, clear explanations and frequent checks for understanding are important. And, as with most students with learning disabilities, having all of the needed materials and working in a place with limited distractions is always a good idea!

As with any learning disability, the earlier that the dyscalculia can be identified and remediated, the greater the chance that your child will stay on track or stay motivated to catch up. Talking with your child’s teacher is the best place to start so make that call or, if the teacher has contacted you, be open to their concerns. As your child’s advocate, you can help make the difference in gaining access to the right resources to help your child work through learning challenges and achieve academic success.

Want more information on dyscalculia? Here are some online resources:

What is Dyscalculia?

Number Blindness – More Common that Dyslexia

Dyscalculia.org

Related Reading:

What is Number Sense and How Does it Relate to Math Skills?

Do Teachers Give Students Math Anxiety?

Up from the Second Percentile to the Thirty Seventh Percentile in Listening Abilities
Here is a piece of great news from a teacher who is using Fast ForWord in her school. She is reviewing the progress of her students on the program. This young man’s performance in school has really been boosted by the improvement in his listening skills. The turnabout in auditory processing has been amazing.

“I am looking forward to being able to continue to offer Fast ForWord to our students. I have just spoken to a family whose son has increased his SCAN-C result from the 2nd %ile to the 37%ile (post FFWD) and we have been advised that he does not need to pursue the personal FM system which had been an ongoing financial concern to them.”

Rebecca, Teacher in an Independent School, near London

via www.neuronlearning.eu

Rachel in SevenOaks

Penn Research Overturns Theory on How Children Learn Their First Words | Penn News.

PHILADELPHIA — New research by a team of University of Pennsylvania psychologists is helping to overturn the dominant theory of how children learn their first words, suggesting that it occurs more in moments of insight than gradually through repeated exposure.

Autism Mum’s Review of ‘the Brain That Changes Itself’ – Australian Autism Handbook

The whole book is terrific, but it was Chapter 3: Redesigning the Brain that really captured my attention. This chapter focuses on research carried out at the University Of California in San Francisco (UCSF) around children with language and learning disorders. Professor Michael Mezernich and his team are the brains behind Fast ForWord, a plasticity-based children’s’ computer game that’s designed to improve auditory processing, attention and memory through a series of seven carefully targeted brain exercises. Although Fast ForWord was not specifically developed for children with autism, the researchers have found that many children on the spectrum also benefit from it, with the program not only alleviating their language issues but also helping them to become more connected socially.

This accidental finding encouraged Mezernich and his team to conduct research into ASDs. Their work thus far points to an overconnected but disorganised, hyperexcitable, hypersensitive brain (or specifically in this case a region of the brain called the auditory cortex).

And now to the best news of all: based on encouraging research in rats, where they found they could reverse brain changes they believe may be associated with autism, UCSF is currently developing a modified program to Fast ForWord, specifically for children with ASDs. Oh happy, happy day!

To read the full review see http://autism.janecurrypublishing.com.au/book-review-the-brain-that-changes-itself-by-norman-doidge

Autism Eye is a new independent magazine. It has a fresh outlook and is written by journalists who are parents of autistic children.

There is an in-depth review of the experiences of UK based autistic children with Fast ForWord.

The first edition is published in February.

See: www.autismeye.com