We hope you've been enjoying this blog. We're headed out of town and will be back Feb 3rd. When we return, we'd like to share our ideas about "Brain Remodeling-Based Education" and think about how it builds on, but is quite different from Howard Gardner's view of learning embodied in "Multiple Intelligences" and Mel Levine's approach using the model of "A Mind at a Time."

A little preview:

Education today needs to incorporate the view of brain ability and function as a highly dynamic and changeable system. Perceptual disorders in the primary senses - seeing, hearing, and touch, and preferences in memory systems profoundly affect learning efficiency and achievement in school. Thinking about the different ways we think and how much may be within our control, can fundamentally affect the best ways we should teach, how we approach disabilities and special education, and how we design education for the high ability learners.

The new black box warnings about SSRIs and children were directed toward depressed children and adolescents, and extra caution was raised about possible increased suicide risk. However, SSRIs are not prescribed for depressed children - in fact they are prescribed for a wide variety of behavioral disorders in children that include 'disruptive behavior disorder' ('explosive child') and severe anxiety disorder. The question is what effects could they be having on these children, and how well is the safety known?

The serotonin system is widely distributed throughout the brain and it appears to be involved in many processes important for behavior - including arousal, aggression, activation of the autonomic system, pain modulation, and pain modulation. The links provide additional background to the serotonin story. The illicit drug ecstasy is nicknamed the hug drug for the euphoric and empathetic outpourings that can come from its use. After the effect wears off, though, there appears to be a rebound and users are more aggressive or tend to perceive statements in a more aggressive fashion.

These studies again raise cautions about what we know and don't know about serotonin drugs in developing children. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter which is usually regulated in specific locations in precise ways in response to brain activation. Pharmacology is still very non-specific in its action at different sites and in its effects on neurotransmitter levels over time. SSRIs should not be thought of simply restoring something that a child lacks. SSRIs should not be considered lightly these drugs clearly affect much more than aggression or anxiety, and they may unwittingly affect 'good' serotonin-drive pathways (empathy, motivation)as well.


Serotonin, Aggression, Empathy

SSRIs and Apathy
The Empathy Drug
Not Seeing All the Data
The "file drawer" phenomenon: suppressing clinical evidence

The finding that some autistic subjects have difficulty rapidly processing the emotional movements of the face, suggests that slow motion training can improve individual's facial processing. DVDs and videos can be advanced frame-by-frame to help children recognize emotional expressions and their context. The second link below is to Baron-Cohen's Software for facial emotion recognition at amazon.com.

Autism, Movement, and Facial Processing

Mind Reading Software

This study is a good reminder to us that writing is rarely 'automatic'. When University students had to do other tasks at the same time (like making nonsense sounds or tapping) they made multiple errors like omissions, grammatical mistakes, repetitions, and substitutions. It was interesting too that there were different patterns of errors between the two conditions.

These interference effects may play some role in the dysgraphia of dyslexia. Some writing errors may occur because of students'increased demands of the phonological loop or the sensory-motor systems for writing by hand.

Writing is Not Automatic

The article below shares a very positive view of video gaming and learning, and to be true there are many positives. Our daughter just got Harvest Moon for her birthday, an RPG or role playing game whereby you live a virtual life, set up a farm, harvest your crops, sell your goods, find someone to marry, have children, and basically make for yourself a 'good life'. After a little bit of time, we looked in on her - and in the nick of time, we stepped in to prevent her from marrying a poor prospect("Everyone else seemed married, I thought well I just have to get married to someone anyway...")! We encouraged her to wait for the 'right one', told her to spend a little more time 'looking', then redirected her to invest more in resources for the farm and planting more crops before the season was over. She had spent way too much money on dating, and her fields were empty!

Many games do have excellent learning opportunities that encourage decision making, taking risks, flexibility, planning ahead and delay gratification, and a little human psychology to boot. Some limitation in computer use should be had for young children, but there certainly can be excellent benefits if parents carefully research programs and try the programs out themselves first.

In addition, there are wonderful for open source (free) video programming programs that even young children can begin to learn. We are just in the process of joining a school-sponsored homeschool resource center, and found that RPG Maker classes begin in the 3rd grade! (we wish Cybercamps and Digipen's summer program would take the hint).

Video game programming is a great hobby and outlet for children who are tech-happy, and creative. There is a lot to learn about what makes a good game, what makes interesting characters and stories, how problems can be troubleshooted, and the different options that occur in computer programming. Two free resources for do-it-yourself video game programming are Gamemaker (Gamemaker) and RPG Maker (RPG Maker). Games made from the programs can be downloaded from different sites, so children can learn from others how particular effects were achieved, or the over-all game was programmed.

Positive View of Video Games

Maybe you've seen it on a report from a neuropsychologist or school psychologist, or maybe you're just wondering what visual perceptual problems are because you've heard it might occur in dyslexia. Visual perceptual disorders are not uncommon in school age children, and they may present in a variety of ways that may include persistent letter or word reversals, tendency to get lost easily, impaired visual recognition of objects, visual distractibility, and poor drawing and copying.

Risk factors for visual perceptual disorders may include such conditions as dyslexia, premature birth, other birth stress or injury, and autism spectrum disorders or Aspergers.

So what is it? Visual perception is how the brain organizes the visual information coming from the eyes. The eye is not a simple camera. The brain organizes and priorities visual information, looks for shapes, edges, and meaning, makes decisions about what it sees, what to emphasize, and what to ignore. In visual perceptual disorders, the brain can make errors in the general shape, orientation, texture, color, organization, detail, movement, and identity.

Not surprisingly, these problems can make a child look 'spacey', disoriented, inattentive, bizarre (may have poor eye contact), and forgetful. These children may be forever losing things, develop clinging or anxious behaviors, and have perplexing difficulties while learning.

It is important to understand visual perceptual disorders, because research studies suggest that specific training can help overcome some practical difficulties. Also, educationally, the more specific the knowledge about a child's disability, the better choices can be made for optimal learning style and visual environment (lighting, crowding, color, visual presentation).

It was difficult choosing what reference might be most helpful for you blog readers. We've started with one of the easiest articles (simplified) first, then posted our pdf file of "The Different Ways We See", and lastly, a more technical article on visual perception. Visual perception is a complicated topic- and that's probably why it is often not explained to parents. Taking it step-by-step, though, we think you'll find that it helps you understand what a child is going through when she or he has trouble understanding his visual environment. In another post, we'll discuss promising strategies for rehabilitation.

The Different Ways We See
Visual Perception

Studies like these are simple, but they provide strategies for helping children successfully negotiate their environment. Children with visual perceptual problems need training at finding relevant material in crowded situations. Visually busy areas with a lot of movement can be very overwhelming. An important goal is to help children find the salient, or most important features in a busy scene to help orientation. Decisions may be more difficult depending on a child's position in a location, visual angle of looking, the lighting, new materials (holiday decorations, flyers), distracting people or details, and other factors.

If there are recurrent crowded areas where a student becomes overwhelmed or lost, consider photographing it and verbally reviewing salient features to help with orientation. Once a child has mastered orientation in a picture, then bring them again to the busy location, and review the key visual features. Verbal mediation can compensate a great deal for visual figure ground difficulties - it's just hard to remember to check because most children won't tell you that visual overload or distraction is the problem.

Visual complexity of real world scenes

Because the ears also provide information about localization, hearing impairment is often accompanied by distortion in sound localization. This brief abstract found that hearing was much more difficult for a moving target (beware of walking lecturers!).

Hearing Moving Targets

We were recently talking to Jean Goerss, M.D. about this (she's setting up a school for the highly gifted in Arizona and an author of that wonderful book Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults)and we thought we'd share our ideas on this issue.

Although the neurobiology of mathematical ability is still early in its development, it is clear that different brain pathways are activated depending on pathway that is undertaken. In brain imaging studies of problem solving, researchers have been able to show that solving problems by deduction (step-wise, conscious) occurs by a very different route than sudden insight (Aha!, unconscious).

That means that in many cases, it may be difficult for a person solving mathematical problems by insight to know exactly how he or she arrived at an answer. As a general rule, it would therefore be best not to insist on a stepwise solution. But that being said, at the highest levels of mathematics, many gifted problem-solvers are very aware of how they may shift between conscious and 'sub-conscious' solutions, and a better understanding how all this brain stuff works only improves problem-solving for the future.

A number of mathematicians and physicists have written about their thought processes, and often the insight or inductive approaches to problem solving require some free association, manipulation of vague images (auditory or visual), and distraction (music, sleep, etc).

For our gifted mathematicians able to solve problems by insight then, although it may not be the best idea to take a hard line about showing every step of a solution, it might be beneficial to discuss different strategies for solving problems, and to discuss how certain problems may be more readily solved by particular method (e.g. visual, symbolic, verbal, mathematical...). The best situation, it would seem, is to have an arsenal of possible approaches, and flexibility and competence at undertaking different strategies to solve a problem most easily.

A great fairly easy read for topics such as this is James L Adam's Conceptual Blockbusting (A Guide to Better Ideas). We really enjoyed it. He addresses the various blocks which can occur in seeking alternate solutions to different problems (e.g. perceptual, emotional cultural and environmental, intellectual and expressive), and the need to thinking in alternative thinking languages to have the greatest flexibility and strength as a problem solver.

This study caught our eye. Unfortunately we can't post a link to the original article as it is too 'new'. Although the way attention deficit disorder is sometimes referred to as a general attention or executive function disorder, many clinicians and scientists have also commented briefly about "hyperfocus", often in the setting of computer activities.

This small study of 9-12 year old children found that selective visual attention was just fine. What children had difficulty with was inhibiting motor responses (button clicks) when visual distractors were flashed on screen.

We would like to see if some of this work could be replicated with larger groups of children diagnosed with ADHD. There have been some large scale studies comparing behavioral interventions with medical treatment, but surprisingly few studies examining the best learning strategies for children diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. Today most clinical treatment trials are funded primarily by pharmaceutical companies, and fewer financial resources are available for studying non-medical or educational approaches.

Intact Visual Selective Attention in ADD; Impaired Motor Inhibition

Although researchers are making progress at identifying autistic behaviors at earlier ages, surprising little help is available to counsel a parent or teacher on their perceptual or language impairments, learning blocks, or preferred route of learning by the time the children have already entered school.

The behavioral checklist is not going to be able to distinguish children who have central or peripheral auditory impairment, eye movement or visual field abnormalities, brain-based visual perceptual deficits, receptive or expressive language problems, or selective attention or memory deficits.

Individual cognitive strengths and weaknesses need to be evaluated, and specific learning recommendations made based individual learning preferences and strengths, as well as disabilities. Because of the complex differences that exist between children who may share the diagnostic label of "autism", social skills teaching will be most effective if teaching styles are specifically matched to a child's learning profile. For instance, a child with impairment in sound processing might benefit from learning auditory cues of social interaction (prosody, pause, content), whereas such approach would be completely inappropriate for a child with visual perceptual problems who might learn better social interactions from studying computer slow motion visual analyses of faces or other visual therapy.

Daily Herald: Learning and Autism
Neurobiology of Autism
Cognitive Variability Among Autistic Children
Hearing Problems in Autism

Because of what appears to be fairly dramatic underrepresentation of gifted minority students in gifted programs, those who have been identified have passed through difficult 'cuts'. The road may still be difficult though, and parents and teachers should be aware of the importance of strong parent involvement, good student-teacher relationships, sensitivity to learning style differences, and an outlook characterized by optimism and realistic high expectations.

Achievement and Underachievement Among Gifted Minority Students: Problems and Promises

Visual, Spatial, and Language areas are activated when solving algebra equations.

Functional Brain Imaging in Algebra

These low tech tasks remind us a little of the old playground challenge of trying to pat your head with one hand and rub your tummy with the other...but they underscore the existence of separate verbal and visual processing modes, and differential effects of interfering outside tasks.

This kind of research work doesn't seem very high tech, but it does have practical implications for student activites involving multi-tasking, and recommendations for the learning plans of children with auditory verbal or visual weakness.

In the linked abstract below, articulatory suppression refers to a 'blocking' of 'silent speech' by repetitive nonsense speech. If you say pa-pa-pa-pa-pa then it won't interfere with your ability to visually match two pictures or match a verbal description and a picture. But interestingly, a spatial tapping task at the same time could interfere with picture-picture matching and sentence-picture matching if the subjects noted that they tended to imagine a visual picture from the sentence.

In the classroom, some strongly visual learners struggle with balancing the spatial demands of handwriting and note-taking while listening to lectures that evoke strong images. For pure auditory verbal learners (what you hear is what you get), this isn't a problem.

Don't think that auditory learners get off too easily, though. Children or adults who are driving their subvocalization or "saying-to-yourself" pathways overly hard (may happen as a compensation for weak verbal or visual memory), may find themselves can be swamped by too many words or too fast-talking teachers. Because subvocalization during note-taking requires registering what a teacher said, and than saying again to yourself to remember, it means that there is a delay. If during this delay, more incoming auditory information comes in, then it jams the circuits.

Verbal and Visual Learning- Perils of Multi-Tasking

Note-taking Strategies, Teachers Notes, and Disability

Here's a very nice link providing examples of different note-taking strategies. Failure at note-taking may be the final common pathway for many disabilities - dysgraphia or writing disability of course, but also students with auditory processing disorders, visual processing disorders (students with visual memory problems may need to subvocalize to remember- so they get into the "I'm swamped" situation described in today's other article), and those with sustained attention or working memory limitation problems.

All that being said, in the school system we have often found it to be very difficult to allow students to have a syllabus or 'Teachers Notes'. A syllabus is available in most college courses, so what's the problem at the middle or high school level? We hope this will change. Some thoughtful teachers make their notes or syllabi available to all the students - with the idea that they may make additional notes while listening. One high school near to us has even set as a goal to place all upcoming assignments and classroom requirements on Teacher Web pages.

When one stops to think about all the processes required for listening, looking, and taking notes, it's easy to understand how many students can be left behind. Many students can make excellent progress experimenting with note-taking strategies, using visualization methods like Lindamood Bell's Visualizing and Verbalizing, or practicing abstracting or distilling down verbally what was heard. However, some may never be able to do this, although intellectually they may be able to learn all the same information of their classmates. For these students, strict accommodations need to be in place, and a regular system needs to be in place that does not place an undue social burden on the disabled student (e.g. having to ask another student for notes every day).

Notetaking Strategies