Thanksgiving in the Brain

We wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Gratitude and thanksgiving are whole brain activities that involve deep-seated emotional areas, areas associated with context-sensitive morality, and abstract conceptual understanding.

Thankfulness to God involves multisensory areas, imagery, and regions associated with feelings of justice, peace, happiness, and unconditional love.

Our family has very much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving - including your many prayers and kindnesses, and our daughter's successful medical treatments thus far.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving week.

Gratitude, Neural basis of human social values fmri pdf
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Celebrating Thanksgiving with all your mind
Eide Neurolearning Blog: Thanksgiving, Charity, and the Brain

Better Remembering with Stories

Because remembering a story is easier than remembering sentences, and remembering sentences is easier than remembering word lists, story-based learning may be essential for children (and those of us adults) who have small auditory verbal working memories. In fact research studies in the 1970's established that story learning could enhance memory retention by 2- to 7-fold.

Whether listening to or reading a story, story comprehension is a bilateral brain process (see below) - although a special contribution is made by the right hemispheric to get the main point or gist of the story. This right-brained importance probably accounts for why dyslexic individuals may show little trouble comprehending story meaning though verbatim accuracy with reading or listening may be quite off.

Other ways to induce story recall should not be surprising - repeating sentences (articulatory rehearsal), pictures, imagery, and emotions - but important when considering what might be the most effective ways to stimulate long-lasting memories.

Teachers - don't completely give up the role of "sage on a stage"...


Active Learning Activities pdf
Dyslexic and Non-Dyslexic Students' Recall of Stories
Your Memory
Comprehending stories in the right hemisphere pdf
Sentence comprehension and rehearsal
Pictures, imagery, and sentence recall in children
Verbatim and Gist Recall in Dyslexic Adults
Beauties of science to conquer science illiteracy

Sensitive Kids: Temperament and Response to Change

Temperamental differences in children's responses to change can be identified early and are quite stable over time. These "sensitive" (or in psych lingo, behaviorally inhibited) children are likely to withdraw or be shy in novel or uncertain situations. fMRI studies do show significant differences in the brain responses of these children - its the amygdala that's sensitive or reactive to changes.

In the figure above, "sensitive" adolescents had much more reactive amygdalas looking at happy or fearful faces than "non-sensitive" or regular controls. The irony about all this is that children who seem poor at social skills often find themselves lumped together - although some are too sensitive to the emotions of others, while others are oblivious or under-sensitive. One also might add that findings such as this suggest that the term behavioral inhibited is almost a misnomer - its not that these kids are withdrawing because of apathy or blunted responeses. Just the opposite - they are very emotionally responsive than their peers - and that accounts for their overload in social situations.




BTW temperament is forgotten all too often when a child is having problems behavioral problems at home or at school. The best book we've seen in a long time that provides practical advice for parents and teachers is Barbara Probst's When the Labels Don't Fit. This book covers topics such as intensity and inflexibility, sensitivity, overload, "electronic addiction", impaired time perception, and differences in learning or perceptual style.

Attention Alters Neural Responses to Evocative Faces in Behaviorally Inhibited Adolescents
Temperament in the Classroom

Dr. James Webb - Webinar Nov 20th Misdiagnoses and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults

Because they lack training, mental health professionals are misdiagnosing gifted and talented children and adults as having mental disorders. The characteristics of gifted/talented children and adults - particularly if not understood at school, home, or work - often are mistaken for significant behavioral or emotional problems that can be misdiagnosed as Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Conduct Disorder, or Bi-Polar Disorder... Parents and educators, therefore, must become more informed about these issues.

However, for other children and adults, their giftedness is related, but often overlooked, for diagnoses that are accurate such as Existential Depression, Bi-Polar, Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder, Sleep Disorders or Multiple Personality Disorder. That is, these children and adults do indeed have dual diagnoses - giftedness and some disorder. It is important that the aspects related to giftedness not be overlooked or misunderstood by professionals.

This session provides information to help parents, educators, and health care professionals understand how they can differentiate gifted behaviors from behavioral pathology. Dr. Webb will describe commonalities and contrasts between the characteristics of gifted children and adults and the behaviors described in the DSM-IV that are used by mental health professionals to make differential diagnoses. In addition, Dr. Webb will discuss dual diagnoses and how treatment approaches with gifted children and adults often need to be modified. Sign up here

Dr. James T. Webb founded SENG in 1981, and is the lead author of award winning books including Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults, Guiding the Gifted Child, A Parent's Guide to Gifted Children, Grandparent's Guide to Gifted Children, and Gifted Parent Groups: The SENG Model. He was previously President of the American Association for Gifted Children, on the board of directors for the National Association for Gifted Children, President of the Ohio Psychological Association, and a member of the Council of Representatives of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Webb was recognized as one of the 25 most influential psychologists in a national survey published in Gifted Child Today. www.giftedbooks.com

Training the Eyes to See - Convergence Insufficiency, Vision Therapy, Reading, and Computer Vision Syndrome

In a long-awaited randomized blinded clinical trial, office-based convergency insufficiency training was found to improve symptomatic convergence insufficiency over home-based exercises, computer-based therapy + home exercises, or placebo therapy in the office (mock therapy training - monocular exercises only).

Excerpt:

"A successful or improved outcome was found in 73%, 43%, 33%, and 35% of patients in the OBVAT (office-based vergence/accommodative therapy with home reinforcement), HBPP (home-based pencil push-ups), HBCVAT+ (home-based computer vergence/accommodative therapy and pencil push-ups), and OBPT (office-based placebo therapy with home reinforcement ) groups, respectively."

Some of us may have only become familiar with the side effects of convergence insufficiency when we get older (presbyopia - trouble focusing on small print, eye pain, etc.) or perhaps if we're having to work too many hours per day at the computer (e.g. computer vision syndrome). No wonder it is such a puzzle to children who may not necessarily know how good their vision should be normally, and why they are having such a hard time with reading.

It's interesting to see the magnitude of benefit with office-based training over home or even home + computer-based training. Bravo for the developmental optometrists for performing a randomized control trial involving their therapy. Why is office-based training so much better? Not sure. Some possibilities - better motivation and compliance, greater flexibility in administering therapy tasks, optimized task rotations?

A study such as this is just the beginning, but a necessary start.

Every child with difficulty reading should be given the Convergence Insufficiency Symptom Survey pdf to see whether convengence insufficiency is contributing to the problem. The mean score for children wtih convergence insufficiency 30 vs. 8.4 (for more info, see here).

Common screening questions include: Do you lose your place while reading or doing close work? Do you have to re-read the same line of words? Do you notice the words blurring or coming in and out of focus when reading or doing close work...

Randomized Clinical Trial of Treatments for Symptomatic Convergence Insufficiency in Children pdf
Kids Eye Problems Emerge in Homework Battle