The Brain Dictionary

“Words, words, words,” says Hamlet. “What’s in a name?” asks Juliet. Shakespeare had his characters musing on language, as their author dove deeply into the English dictionary, pulling out words, connecting them in novel ways, and even coining some of his own. Shakespeare is not unique in his interest in words. Many neuroscientists have shared in a fascination with language, and much research has gone into the topic.

One of the latest studies on language was done by a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who set out to explore which parts of the brain are active in processing which particular words. While their subjects listened to hours of narratives, they used functional MRI scans to monitor the subjects’ brain activity, e.g. blood flow, in response to particular words. What they found was activity that spanned many brain regions, and both brain hemispheres, with patterns being highly consistent across the participants. Certain areas were activated in response to words in similar categories. For example, words having to do with appearance tended to be found near the visual cortex. Based on the results, the researchers were able to map the brain’s semantic systems in previously unknown detail.

The study findings highlight that language comprehension, rather than being specific to just one part of the brain, is a process that involves a wide variety of brain regions, depending on the type of meaning of the language involved. This parallels what we know about other cognitive functions, such as memory, that involve various parts of the brain. If you were to go looking for a memory, it is not as if turning a key to a singular “Memory Center” would unlock the area that you need for sorting through them all. Similarly, there is no singular “Language Comprehension Zone” but rather an assortment of involved areas linked to particular categories of meaning.

It is pretty exciting to live in a time when we cannot only read a Shakespeare play but can view the map of a mind responding to its words. What’s in a name? We are learning more and more about the answer.

New Study Looks at How Brains Multi-Task

Scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have just announced new research findings that may help explain how our brains focus attention on specific tasks and filter out distracting or unimportant information, a process often referred to as "saliency determination."

As reported by NYU Langone, senior study investigator and neuroscientist Michael Halassa, MD, PhD. noted, 

“Our latest research findings support a newly emerging model of how the brain focuses attention on a particular task, using neurons in the thalamic reticular nucleus as a switchboard to control the amount of information the brain receives, limiting and filtering out sensory information that we don’t want to pay attention to. Filtering out distracting or irrelevant information is a vital function. People need to be able to focus on one thing and suppress other distractions to perform everyday functions such as driving, talking on the phone, and socializing.”

The researchers also noted the interaction of the thalamic reticular nucleus and the prefrontal cortex of the brain in controlling how the brain multi-tasks. The prefrontal cortex has long been known to control executive functions - organization, focus, and other behaviors that impact day to day functioning. The study looked at how mice were able to respond to stimuli when their prefrontal cortex was inactivated, which disrupted TRN neural signaling. When this occurred, the mice were not able to block out distracting stimuli and find a reward of milk.

Certainly, this research has a way to go before it fully explains how this process works in humans. But it may be a huge next step in explaining the brain issues underlying attention deficit and executive function disorders.

E-Books and Sleep Disruption

We've written countless times on the importance of sleep - just click on the topic "sleep" in the searchable index on the right hand side of this post. But now we need to sound a cautionary note about a recommendation that we often make to students -- to use an E-reader, such as a Kindle or an iPad for most of their reading. We recommend these devices for many reasons. They allow students to easily click on the definition of unfamiliar words without needing to put down a book and seek out a dictionary. Many versions allow students to highlight text. They enable students who struggle with reading decoding to easily increase the size of the text they view, something which research has shown makes it easier for some students to decode the words on a page. And they often have audio capacity, which allows students to hear the words pronounced while reading them on the e-Reader page, something that enhances the connection between the written word and the spoken sounds and builds comprehension.

In short, we are big fans of e-Readers and the accessibility and convenience they offer. But a recent study by Harvard Medical School researchers has demonstrated that E-readers, which the study refers to as LE-eBooks (for light emitting electronic books), can have a negative impact on health and sleep when used before bedtime. As noted in an online report in Harvard Medical School News:

“We found the body’s natural circadian rhythms were interrupted by the short-wavelength enriched light, otherwise known as blue light, from these electronic devices,” said Anne-Marie Chang, corresponding author and associate neuroscientist at Brigham and Women’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders. “Participants reading an LE-eBook took longer to fall asleep and had reduced evening sleepiness, reduced melatonin secretion, later timing of their circadian clock and reduced next-morning alertness than when reading a printed book.”

Different e-devices have different levels of brightness and the study used only iPads. Still, they all use blue light in some form and can be expected to have some impact on sleep.

So, what does that mean for parents and students? E-readers still have significant benefits and their use can provide not just convenience for everyone, but real help to those who struggle with reading. But this well-crafted study should prompt families to think about how -- and when -- these devices are used. The bedtime story, whether it is one you read to your child, one your child reads by himself, or your own end-of-day reading time, will be better for all if done from a paper book.

New Study Shows That Brains of Children with ADHD Mature More Slowly

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is one of the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorders among children. Increasingly, practitioners are able to recognize its symptoms; its cause, however, has been a bit murkier. Past imaging has revealed that brain maturation seems to occur later among children with ADHD than in those who do not have difficulty with attention. Now, a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has added further data to the late maturation observation: researchers found that brain connections that help with focus don’t develop at the same time in the brains of children with ADHD as in the brains of their peers.

A key finding was the interaction between two networks, the default mode network (DMN) and the task positive network (TPN). On default mode, when the DMN is in control, the brain falls into daydreaming or stream-of-consciousness thinking. The DMN is activated in even typically-developing brains when a person is between tasks or fatigued. Among children with ADHD, however, the DMN interrupts the brain’s productive TPN. These kids seem less able to turn off their default modes at will, causing them to shift into daydreaming mode. Instead of using his TPN to focus on what he’s doing or plan for what comes next, a child may tune out.

Saad Faruque via Flickr CC

Happily, thanks to neuroplasticity, brains can be rewired throughout our lives; even the neurons in adults’ brains can change in response to experience. Teaching children who suffer from ADHD to recognize those moments when their default mode network fails to switch off and giving them strategies to get focused could help many kids to “outgrow” ADHD.

Benefits of Learning to Write by Hand

We were fascinated by a recent piece in The New York Times about the controversy over handwriting instruction. The article thoughtfully summarizes work by neuroscientists demonstrating that learning to write by hand plays an important role in a number of developing neural pathways. Handwriting appears to have a positive impact on reading, idea generation when writing, and memory formation when taking notes in class. Keyboarding does not appear to have the same impact. Interestingly, manuscript and cursive writing each seem to provide different benefits, and research indicates that learning each style of writing leads to greater cognitive engagement than using only one approach. At a time when many schools are abandoning cursive instruction, this finding is particularly provocative.

As our world becomes ever-more reliant on technology, it is important to develop a true understanding of the impact that writing by hand has on the learning process. In our practice, we speak with many parents who are unsure whether to belabor handwriting development when their kids genuinely struggle. Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply transition to typing since that’s what they’ll use when they’re adults, they wonder? And, as the Times piece points out, the nearly ubiquitous Common Core standards suggest that children learn to hand write legible letters only in kindergarten and first grade; after that, the focus is shifted to keyboarding skills.

Here at the Yellin Center, we often find ourselves considering “the genius of and versus the tyranny of or.” Simply supplying children with a list of accommodations (e.g. either do it this way or learn it that way) is often limiting; a better strategy is establishing a system of accommodations that works in conjunction with a carefully crafted instructional plan (e.g. do this and that, too). Some students need help with a mechanical aspect of a task to complete classwork and should be given workarounds to get through particular tasks. But that doesn’t mean those mechanics shouldn’t be practiced at a separate time. For example, a child who struggles to sound out words certainly needs to develop those critical decoding skills. However, it’s also important that she listen to texts that match her intellectual level so she can practice her comprehension skills and build a love of literature. Learning to decode and listening to texts is a much better approach than only working on either decoding instruction or using audiobooks.

Children should learn how to write by hand, but if they are having difficulty with letter formation they should be given “bypass strategies” like having someone scribe for them, using speech-to-text software, or keyboarding, so their capacity for developing rich written output is not hijacked by their weak graphomotor function. It is essential, however, that kids continue developing handwriting “off-line”; as their mastery and automaticity grows, handwriting can be brought online and integrated into the writing process gradually.

This Friday, April 11th, Dr. Paul Yellin will be the Keynote Speaker at a forum titled Silent Crisis: The Impact of Chronic Stress and Trauma on Early Childhood Learning and Development. His presentation will look at a number of important considerations in the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral development of children under stress from the environment in which they live.

Starting with the famous "marshmallow experiment" and its follow-ups, he will look at how children's impulses are shaped by whether they have - or don't have - a reliable, trusted adult in their lives. He will discuss how early language skills are acquired and the importance of exposure to language in this process. He will then proceed to look at how the developing brain is impacted by stress, using images of brains in different circumstances to clarify his examples. 

Dr. Yellin will then speak about  neuroplasticity - rewiring our brains - to see how this ability is part of resilience, the ability to bounce back, recover, and ultimately overcome adversity. When children have a "turnaround" person in their lives, they are often able to succeed even if their early development was fraught with stress and lacked the language input and emotional support that is optimal for brain development. 

This event, with other speakers including Aletha Maybank, MD, MPH, Assistant Commissioner of the Brooklyn  Public Health Office of the NYC Department of Health; Evelyn K. Blanck, LCSW, from the NY Center for Child Development and Renee Wilson-Simmons, Dr.PH, Director of the National Center for Children in Poverty, is co-sponsored by Healthy Start Brooklyn, Central Harlem Healthy Start, and Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Downstate New York Healthy Start, in collaboration with the Northern Manhattan Perinatal Partnership.

The forum will be held at the Oberia Dempsey Mult-Service Center, 127 West 127th Street in Manhattan and admission is free and open to the public. It begins at 9 a.m.

How Do We Know What Babies Know?

Babies, it seems, do something new every single day. Before they are even able to control their own body movements, they are engaged in a furious observation of the world around them, learning from just about everything they see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Although there is a wide range of “normal,” of course, lots of studies have determined which concepts babies understand at certain ages and stages. For example, there is evidence that babies recognize their mother’s face in as little as three days after birth and that they have a keenly developed number sense by six months of age.

_-0-_ via Flickr

But how can scientists determine what babies know? Asking a newborn whether the woman holding him looks like his mother isn't likely to elicit a useful response. One way to get a read on babies’ thought patterns is by performing a brain scan. But this technique isn't ideal. For example, a functional magnetic resonance image (fMRI) provides great images but is very expensive, and electroencephalography (EEG) is cheaper but doesn't yield information about impulses deep within the brain.

Instead of measuring brain activity, researchers have learned that babies’ behavior in response to stimuli can reveal a surprising amount of information about what goes on inside their heads. Most babies respond in predictable ways to novelty and many experiments take advantage of this tendency. Careful observation of babies has led to some useful, measurable methods that help researchers as they work to probe the minds of the very youngest people around.

Linguists, for example, are interested in the way very young babies hear sounds. Speakers of certain languages often cannot hear the difference between sounds in a foreign language; for example, Japanese and Chinese speakers struggle to differentiate between the /r/ and /l/ sounds, and /v/ and /w/ sound the same to speakers of Hindi and Thai. Are babies hardwired to speak a particular language from the moment they’re born, or is this selective deafness a learned trait?*

To determine what babies hear, scientists use the concept of novelty. Babies are provided with a high amplitude sucking device to measure their responses, then are exposed to sounds. To the baby, a high amplitude sucking device feels like a pacifier, but in fact it is connected to a system that measures the rate at which the baby sucks it. During the experiment, the baby listens to a recording of one of the target sounds over and over again. For a baby born in an Arabic-speaking environment, for example, researchers might choose to play “pah, pah, pah...” When the sound begins, the baby will begin to suck the pacifier at a faster rate, but as it grows accustomed to the sound, it will demonstrate its boredom by sucking more slowly. Then, suddenly, the recording will change; the baby will begin to hear “bah, bah, bah...” Adults and even young children who speak Arabic have great difficulty hearing the difference between /p/ and /b/, and most don’t notice when “pah” switches to “bah.” But most babies begin sucking much faster the instant the sound changes; their curiosity is aroused by the difference, and they become attentive and interested. To their older counterparts, the stimulus appears unchanged, but babies demonstrate a much keener sense of sound discrimination.

Another way to measure a baby’s perception is to record the amount of time she spends looking at something. Just as babies suck faster when they hear something new, they tend to look longer at things that are different from what they know or that violate their expectations. This concept, known as “preferential looking,” was first developed in the 1960s, and scientists still use it today. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University, for example, demonstrated that babies understand the limitations of the physical world by showing them a series events and recording their looking times. Some of the events were deemed “real,” in that they were possible, but some “magic” events were physically impossible. In one “real” video, a ball rolled up to a wall and bounced off. Babies weren't too captivated by that, but they couldn't take their eyes off a “magic” video of a ball rolling into, then through, a solid wall. This fascination indicates that babies as young as two and a half months had gained a great deal of knowledge about the physical properties of the world.

Babies may spend a lot of time gazing around them, reaching for objects, listening intently, knocking things over, and banging on surfaces. But the serious learning going on beneath the surface is anything but child’s play.


*Interestingly, the reason older children and adults can’t hear the difference between similar sounds in other languages has nothing to do with their hearing. The answer is found, instead, in the brain. Babies are born with more than 80 billion neurons (brain cells) and synapses (connections between brain cells) in their brains – more than are found in any adult. This means that they are prepared to detect all kinds of stimuli in the world. The problem, however, is that having lots of extraneous neurons and synapses means that information and impulses don’t travel very quickly. Imagine searching through a suitcase for a particular item; if the suitcase is filled with things, it takes a long time to find what one wants. Similarly, the multitude of structures in the infant brain can make it work more slowly. Just as taking out half of what’s in the suitcase can cut down on search time, babies’ brains reduce the synapses in the name of efficiency. As the baby observes and interacts with its environment, the cellular connections that aren’t needed get the boot. This regulatory process is known as pruning. So after spending a year or so in a Chinese-speaking environment, where the /r/ and /l/ sounds don’t contribute to meaning, the brain of an infant there would determine that being able to detect the difference between the two sounds is unimportant. That synapse is pruned, making way for more efficient synaptic connections that the baby has noticed are relevant. Pruning is thought to result in learning, as the brain customizes itself to perform optimally according to observed environmental factors.

NIMH Notes Limits of DSM

We recently came across an excellent explanation of the limits of the American Psychiatric Association's DSM, the newly revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. We have not been fans of the DSM approach to attention difficulties, and have written before about how the DSM does not go far enough in understanding how attention impacts learning and behavior.

The more recent criticism of the DSM was prompted by the release of a complete revision of this Manual, after much consideration, this past May. It comes from Thomas R. Insel, M.D., Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), who discussed the limitations of the DSM in a blog post in which he described the DSM as, "at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each."

Dr. Insel notes that the DSM diagnoses "are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms," not on laboratory measures or scientific studies. He goes on to explain that the NIMH has been engaged in a project to move beyond such diagnoses by focusing on research into areas such as imaging, genetics, and cognitive science.

This project, Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), will form the basis of how the NIMH, and presumably the extensive network it influences, looks at diagnosis, moving beyond the limits of the DSM. As the NIMH notes, "Rather than starting with an illness definition and seeking its neurobiological underpinnings, RDoC begins with current understandings of behavior-brain relationships and links them to clinical phenomena." This approach is very much in keeping with the approach we apply at The Yellin Center, and we look forward to the day when this project results in a universal understanding of the need for looking at the science behind labels.

Study Suggests Connection between Internet Gaming Abuse and Addictive Disorders

Parents who can't get their children to stop using their phone or computer may complain that their child is "addicted" to the internet. There is more truth to this idea than an exasperated parent may imagine!

Nathanial Burton-Bradford

A study by a team of researchers at Seoul National University in Korea used magnetic resonance imaging of the brains of 15 adolescents who were addicted to internet gaming, to see if there were brain changes that would be typical of individuals with addictions to drugs or other addictive behaviors. The determination as to what level of internet gaming constituted an actual addiction was made by looking at such measures of addiction generally as: "tolerance, withdrawal, preoccupation with playing it, repeated unsuccessful attempts to reduce or stop it, negatively influenced mood when attempting to reduce it, and neglecting important relationships or activities because of it."

The teens were screened to exclude those with psychiatric disorders. The researchers were looking at the region of the brain known as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), which is known to be thinner in individuals with addictions. The results of the brain scans evidenced a clear thinning of the OFC in the internet addicted group as compared to control subjects. While the researchers stress that this was a small study and that more investigation is needed, they note that their findings were consistent with prior research and that there is a " shared neurobiological mechanism between internet addiction and other addictive disorders." They also note that the connection between brain changes and addiction -- and which comes first -- needs to be examined further.

Coping with Test Anxiety: Worriers Versus Warriors

Most of us have been there: butterflies in the stomach, clammy hands that tremble, difficulty breathing. Test anxiety is all too familiar to most of us. A recent article in The New York Times by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman (also authors of Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing) explores why some kids (Warriors) seem to approach exams with cavalier nonchalance while others (Worriers) are seized with paralyzing stress. Of course, human behavior is influenced by a multitude of factors, but there’s also a compelling genetic explanation for this phenomenon. When a person experiences stress, the prefrontal cortex of his/her brain is flooded with the chemical dopamine. Because our brains work best when dopamine levels are controlled, the gene responsible for clearing that dopamine, a gene called the COMT gene, sets to work to restore balance. COMT, however, comes in two varieties. The first clears the dopamine slowly. The second clears it rapidly. Those who have the rapid removal version of COMT, Warriors, tend to perform better under stress. Worriers on the other hand, whose brains seem to become saturated with dopamine, often experience a drop in performance.

Here’s the part that makes this seem particularly unfair to Worriers: A slow-acting COMT gene is typically associated with higher cognitive and executive function skills. So students with higher cognitive abilities who sit down to a test are at a larger disadvantage than their less academically able classmates. The Times articles notes that a study in Taiwan demonstrated that students with higher IQs coupled with the slow-removal gene under-performed their fast-acting COMT-endowed counterparts on a high-stakes national exam.

This seems like bad news for Worriers, but, happily, there is hope. Studies of stress indicate that, like much else in life, the spin we put on a situation has an enormous impact on the way we deal with it. According to the authors, both amateur and professional athletes have been found to experience the same levels of stress before competition. The difference? The amateurs view stress as a derailing force while the professionals view it as an energizing one. The article notes that a study at Harvard put this principle to the test in an academic setting. Before taking a practice test, some students were given a statement explaining to them that stress actually improved test performance. Not only did that group out-perform the control group on the practice test, but they attained higher scores again when they took the actual GRE weeks later.

Part of managing test anxiety, then, is a matter of philosophy. The other comes with good, old-fashioned practice. The authors advocate “training, preparation, and repetition” as the best way to prepare Worriers for a stressful event. Here are some of our ideas for combating test anxiety, whether you’re coaching a student in your life, or yourself:

• Allow the student to verbalize what she is feeling and help her by giving her the right language if she struggles. If talking it out is too hard, ask her to write about her thoughts. 

• Help the student to understand that stress is not only normal but potentially beneficial. Share with him the story about stress experienced by amateur and professional athletes. Talk about viewing stress as a positive phenomenon. 

• Physical relaxation can sometimes trigger mental clarity. Help students learn self-coaching language, or teach them to tense, then relax, various muscle groups. Some students may feel better if they have the chance to engage in physical activity before a test, like doing some yoga poses or going for a jog. 

• Familiarity with test-day factors can be enormously helpful in combating stress. Help your student take practice tests, ideally under the same conditions in which she will face the real thing (i.e. setting, time constraints, etc.) If all that isn’t possible, visit the test site, review the testing procedures with your student using the verbatim instructions if you can find them, etc. 

• Scholastic competitions (the math team, spelling bees, etc.) can serve as what the authors call “inoculation” for Worriers. Encourage your student to participate in such activities.

Photo: CC by Justin D. Miller

A Week to Focus on ADHD

A coalition of national organizations, including CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) and the Attention Deficit Disorder Association (ADDA), have declared this to be ADHD Awareness Week, and we thought that this would be a good time to look at the facts about ADHD to help parents, educators, and students better understand this condition.

The CDC notes that ADHD is one of the most commonly diagnosed behavioral disorders of childhood, with 9.5 % of children being diagnosed with ADHD at some point. Boys are two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than are girls. Some of that difference may stem from the fact that there is more than one kind of ADHD; the National Institutes of Mental Health notes that there are three different types of ADHD:

• Predominantly hyperactive-impulsive
• Predominantly inattentive
• Combined hyperactive-impulsive and inattentive

A girl who seems to daydream in class may not be as likely to be diagnosed as a boy who can't sit still and is disruptive, but both students may have ADHD and may need treatment and strategies to get the most out of what is going on in their classrooms.

Research is clear that ADHD has a real, brain-based cause and also has a genetic component. It is not caused by parenting styles or food allergies, although environmental toxins may be a factor in its occurrence. Co-morbidities, conditions that are often diagnosed in individuals with ADHD, include anxiety, depression, and learning disabilities. 

While diagnosis of ADHD is generally made by looking at the how many symptoms occur in various settings -- such as both at home and at school -- it is important to take a nuanced look at what is going in an individual before deciding on a diagnosis and before determining the appropriate treatment. For example, a student who is struggling to process what is going on in his classroom because of a language disability may appear to be inattentive, when the difficulty is actually a learning problem, not ADHD. Only by addressing the language processing difficulty will this student be able to attend properly in his classroom. 

What about treatment? This needs to be an individualized decision, especially for children. There are many medications that can be effective in helping with ADHD symptoms, and the National Institutes of Mental Health has a good explanation of what these are. But these medications can have side effects and parents may want to consider behavioral strategies before they decide whether medication is the best choice for their child. It is crucial that parents work with a physician with experience with these medications to make the right decision for their child.

Related articles from The Yellin Center Blog about ADHD

Music Lessons Can Bring Lifelong Learning Benefits

Music lessons are a part of childhood for many young people, but it is not uncommon for youngsters to stick with their lessons for only a few years. Scientists at Northwestern University have looked at the impact of these early lessons on adults and have found that even a few years of lessons can have a positive impact on the brain years later.

The study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, looked at 45 adults who were matched for age and IQ. One group had no music instruction, another between one and five years, and a third group had between six and eleven years of lessons. Those who had at least some music lessons generally began their studies around age nine. The researchers measured electrical signals from the auditory brainstem of each of the subjects and found that those who had even short term music instruction showed improved processing of sounds. They also noted that the more recently the music lessons stopped, the more significant the improved processing.

“Thus, musical training as children makes better listeners later in life,” said Dr. Nina Kraus, Director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern, in an announcement released by the university. “Based on what we already know about the ways that music helps shape the brain,” she said, “the study suggests that short-term music lessons may enhance lifelong listening and learning.”

Photo: Till Westermayer / Creative Commons

The Role of Memory in Decision Making

We've all heard the expression "learning by doing." But just how does having done or experienced something in the past actually help shape our decisions and behaviors later? 

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, have looked at brain processes in rats to better understand how humans build on their past experiences in making new decisions. Dr. Loren Frank and his team blocked the neural pathways -- split-second electrical bursts in the memory areas of the brain -- that enabled the animals to "replay" their past experiences learning their way through a particular maze. Earlier studies had suggested the role of mentally reliving past experiences as key factor in making new decisions, such as how to approach a new maze configuration. But it was necessary to isolate this brain function to understand its importance to learning and decision making. When this function was blocked, the rats were unable to link their previous experience with the maze to their current situation and their performance in the maze deteriorated. 

“It appears to be these ripple-like bursts in electrical activity in the hippocampus that enable us to think about future possibilities based on past experiences and decide what to do,” Dr. Frank stated to the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which helped to fund the research. "Similar patterns of hippocampus activity have been detected in humans during similar situations.” This "awake mental replay" is related to the way that sleep helps to consolidate memories in humans and is also related to day-dreaming. It seems even when we think we are disengaged, our brain is busily at work, consolidating what we have learned and readying us to apply it to a new situation.

Image: Derivative work: Looie496 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

How Brains Respond to Reading

Rejoice, bibliophiles! Recent neuroscience research suggests that reading fiction is more than just enjoyable; it can stimulate the brain in valuable ways and even positively affect a person’s behavior and social cognition. A recent article in the New York Times explains several fascinating phenomena discovered by scientists. 

Interestingly, reading words can activate parts of our brain usually reserved for handing input that our senses gather from the outside world. In one study, simply reading words referring to materials that people detect with their olfactory sense like “cinnamon” caused the areas of the brain that process smell to “light up.” In a different study, subjects saw words associated with smells (like “coffee”) and words associated with objects that have no strong smell (like “key”). Brain scans showed that the olfactory cortex responded only to the words associated with scents. Similarly, reading metaphors that evoke one’s tactile sense (e.g. “his leathery hands”) caused responses in the sensory cortex of test subjects’ brains. “The brain, it seems,” the article concludes, “does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life.”  

Similarly, our brains react to the social situations presented in novels in much the same way they respond to the social situations we encounter in our daily lives. Understanding stories causes people to engage the same skills they use to figure out what makes their friends and family feel certain emotions or behave in a certain way. One study even found that increased exposure to fiction was correlated with better social skills, like empathy and interpersonal understanding. Similar findings emerged in a study of preschool children: Those who had more stories read to them tended to have stronger social skills and a better understanding of the people around them.

Most of us know that reading to young children, or encouraging older ones to read their own books, is valuable for myriad reasons. Neuroscience has just handed us another.

photo from Difei Li

Diagnosing Dyslexia in Young Children

A new study of young children, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, helps expand our understanding of dyslexia and may enable parents and teachers to provide remediation before these children experience reading difficulties in school. 

A team headed by Dr. Nadine Gaab of Children's Hospital in Boston looked at 36 five year old "pre-readers" who had a family history of dyslexia and compared them to a control group without such family history, matched for age, socioeconomic status, and IQ scores. Neuroscientists have long known that there is a genetic component to dyslexia, so the children studied could be expected to have a higher than usual risk for dyslexia.

The researchers used functional MRI studies to look at brain activity during phonological processing (involving such language tasks as deciding whether two words sound alike) which did not involve reading. They found that the group of children at risk for dyslexia showed reduced brain activation in the same areas of the brain that are impacted in older children and adults with dyslexia.

The researchers note that their results suggest that the differences in how individual brains work with language skills are not a result of reading failure, but are present before literacy acquisition starts. They caution that their study sample is small, and that more work needs to be done in this area. 

What does this mean for young children? Most children with dyslexia are not diagnosed until they encounter reading difficulties in school, often in third grade or beyond. There are a number of effective programs to help these children read, but interventions work better the sooner they are begun. 

As Dr. Gaab noted in an interview with Reuters, "Often, by the time they get a diagnosis, they usually have experienced three years of peers telling them they are stupid, parents telling them they are lazy. We know they have reduced self esteem. They are really struggling." She expressed the hope that this kind of research focused on young children will facilitate earlier diagnosis and more effective interventions.

Photo used under Creative Commons by Clever Claire

IQ Changes in Teens

A recently published study in the journal Nature has demonstrated changes in both IQ and the size and density of specific brain regions in a group of 33 healthy teens. These findings are of particular interest because IQ has long been thought to be fairly fixed, with scores at one point in time usually very close to scores earlier or later in life.

IQ is a numerical measure that is derived by examining a number of tasks in two general areas -- verbal skills and performance (non-verbal) skills. When the "scores" of each of these subtests are looked at together, clinicians are generally able to derive a single numerical expression of the aggregate skills and this number is the IQ. (Note that when there is signficant scatter among the subtest scores it may not be possible to derive a meaningful aggregate score for an individual.)

What the researchers found through their use of standard IQ testing and functional and structural brain imaging was that 33% of the teens showed increases or decreases in their full scale IQ score from age 14 to age 18; 39% showed changes in their verbal scores; and 21% showed changes in their performance IQ. These changes were both upward and downward and in most cases were of at least 15 points. Notably, changes in all of the verbal scores were related to changes in both volume and density in an area of the brain related to speech, the left frontal cortex. They also noted that changes in most of the performance tests were associated with density changes in an area of the brain associated with finger movements.

The study authors suggest that clinicians dealing with patients in this age group be aware of these flucuations to better assess cognitive changes that may occur for other reasons. They also note that the question of whether IQ changes later in life is not yet determined.

Photo used under Creative Commons by Isaac Mao

Neuroscience & The Classroom

Dr. Yellin is a featured faculty member in an exciting new initiative from Annenberg Learner, a program "to advance excellent teaching in American schools through the development and distribution of multimedia resources for teaching and learning." Annenberg Learner is one of many projects of the Annenberg Foundation, whose mission is to assist nonprofit organizations throughout the U.S. and the world, with a focus on improved communication and education.

The course in which Dr. Yellin is featured is Neuroscience & the Classroom: Making Connections, designed to help K-12 teachers learn more about the field of Mind, Brain, and Education, and to thereby become better able to understand the continually growing body of scientific information about how brains work and how students learn.

Among the other speakers featured in this series are Kurt Fischer, Director for the Mind, Brain, and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Matthew H. Schneps,  director of the Laboratory for Visual Learning at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who has been previously featured in this blog; Dr. Todd Rose, a faculty member at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he teaches a course on educational neuroscience, as well as a research scientist at CAST (the Center for Applied Special Technology), Dr. Antonio Damasio, who directs the University of Southern California Brain and Creativity Institute, and numerous others.

The course materials are available for free as streaming video, with downloadable written materials. The materials can also be purchased from Annenberg Learner in other formats, along with printed course material.

Watch an interview with Dr. Yellin from the series about creating a common language shared by neuroscientists and educators (depending on your browser, you may need to page down on the linked page to the appropriate link).

Brain Structure and Function in ADHD

Recent findings presented at a November meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and reported in the Wall Street Journal revealed that children with diagnosed attention difficulties showed functional differences in a key part of the brain associated with important aspects of mental controls. The study looked at 19 children with attention difficulties, and a control group of 23, and conducted functional MRI scans to look at how their brains functioned when engaged in a memory task.

The fMRI scans revealed that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain that coordinates mental activity, functioned differently in children with attention difficulties.

Another recent study, from researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center (associated with the NYU School of Medicine, where Dr. Yellin is on the faculty of the Department of Pediatrics), indicated that adults who were diagnosed with attention problems during their childhood have physically different brain structures, including decreased cortical thickness and gray matter volumes.

When considered together along with other studies indicating structural differences in areas such as the caudate nucleus (which plays an important role in memory and learning), a body of knowledge about differences in brain structures and functions in individuals who struggle with attention is beginning to emerge.

Linking the Mind and the Brain

A fascinating blog post by the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health looks at the interaction of the brain -- its structures, functions, and malfunctions -- and the mind -- the way we think, behave, and feel.

Dr. Thomas Insel notes that advances in imaging and other related techniques allow us to look beyond lesions in the brain, which cause such illnesses as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Researchers can now use tools such as functional MRIs, PET scans, and advanced EEGs to examine the circuitry in the brain and to study patterns of cortical function that are present in such conditions as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). As Dr. Insel states, "For the first time, we can study the mind via the brain."

Using the example of ADHD, Dr. Insel discusses how a condition which is generally described by its impact on behavior (hyperactivity) and cognition (attention) appears to be related to delayed cortical maturation. Likewise, research has indicated that serious depression seems to have "biomarkers" in the brain that may yield possible pathways to new treatments.

Understanding the brain functions and structures that underly conditions such as ADHD or depression is the first step to coming up with new and effective forms of treatment. It also allows for the exciting -- and as yet unrealized -- possiblity of prevention and early intervention to prevent the cognitive, social, and emotional difficulties that are the consequences of disorders of brain circuitry. We are certainly not there yet, but Dr. Insel has provided a tantalizing glimpse of the future.

Photo used courtesy of NIMH

Teen Brains

We've recently come across an interesting publication from the National Institute of Mental Health titled The Teen Brain: Still Under Construction. It provides a basic discussion of how the brains of children develop, and notes that the brains of young people don't take on the characteristics of adult brains until the early 20's.

Why is this so important for both parents and teens to understand? Everyone knows that teenagers can be impulsive and don't always exhibit the kind of judgment that will come with adulthood. What this booklet points out is the frightening consequences of this delayed maturity. It cites higher rates of crime and alcohol abuse among teens and notes that deadly injuries are roughly six times higher between ages 15-19 than they are for children between 10 and 14.

The key to the information in this publication is scientists' ability to scan the brain and to look at the structures of the brain at different ages. For example, brain scan studies have shown that parts of the brain that control movement mature early on, but that the areas that control impulses and planning are among the last to mature.

Although written for adults, this booklet is designed to be appealing to adolescents as well. It's a quick read and worth downloading and looking at -- and sharing with your teen and his or her still-developing brain.