Dyslexia

Table of contents

1 Definition 2 Variations 3 Facts and Statistics 4 Famous Dyslexics 5 Physiology and Treatment 6 Lack of Public Support

Definition

People who experience reading and/or writing difficulty without being otherwise intellectually disabled are said to suffer from dyslexia. A dyslexic is a person who has the reading disability known as dyslexia. People are diagnosed as dyslexic when their reading problems can't be explained by lack of intellectual ability, or by inadequate instruction, or by sensory problems such as poor eyesight. Because reading is a complex mental process, dyslexia has many potential causes.

Dyslexia is caused by an inability to process linguistic information in visual form. There is also a form of dyslexia that, among other things, relates to the ability to read standard analog clocks (dyscalcula), which is a rotational positioning dyslexia, as opposed to the symmetric dyslexia found with dyslexics that have reading and writing problems (dysgraphia and dyspraxia)

Variations

In addition to the typical variety of dyslexia there are also several others:

• Verbal Dyspraxia- a neurological disorder characterised by marked difficulty in the use of speech sounds, which is the result of an immaturity in the speech production area of the brain.
• Dyspraxia- a neurological disorder characterised by a marked difficulty in carrying out routine tasks involving balance, fine-motor control, and kinesthetic coordination.
• Dysgraphia- a neurological disorder characterised by distorted and incorrect writing.
• Dyscalcula- a neurological disorder characterised by a problem with learning fundamentals and one or more of the basic numerical skills. Often people with this disorder can understand very complex mathematical concepts and principles but have difficulty processing formulas and even basic addition and subtraction.

Facts and Statistics

5-15% of the population can be diagnosed as suffering from various degrees of dyslexia.

Studying dyslexia is very valuable for understanding intelligence and creativity. Dyslexia illustrates the power of inborn wiring of the brain in developing mental skills. At the same time it can show how inborn limitations can be overcome by using the compensatory power of the brain. The Dyslexic are often highly creative to compensate for thier inborn liability.

Its main manifestation is a difficulty in developing reading skills in elementary school children. Those difficulties result from reduced ability to link up visual symbols with sounds. In the past, dyslexia was mistakenly thought to have a motivational background. Contrary to that erroneus belief, modern research has shown that dyslexia is a condition largely inborn. In otherwords, Dyslexia is a condition that children are born with and not the result of poor parenting or the environment.

Researchers studying the brains of dyslexics have found that in reading tasks dyslexics show reduced activity in the left inferior parietal cortex. Otherwise, dyslexics are known to often show higher than average intelligence. There are marked anatomical differences between dyslexic brains and normal brains.

Famous Dyslexics

A number of eminent scholars throughout history have suffered from varying degree of dyslexia. Among those speculated to have been afflicted with Dyslexia are: Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Michael Faraday, and many others.

Was Einstein Dyslexic or Not?

Although many biographers claim to have disproved that Einstein was dyslexic, their arguments are based on the premise that because he actually excelled in school, he could therefor not have had a learning disability. The intuitively counter-productive interpretation of events that premise represents is manifestly obvious. Just because Einstein was reading Immanuel Kant at the age of 13 does not mean he was not dyslexic. Many people who suffer from dyslexia are actually avaricious readers of extremely heavy academic material. It is troubling that such biographers could have such a weak grasp of what dyslexia is and yet such strong convictions that a man could not have been afflicted with it. The truth is that the Einstein was known to do many of the things that were symptomatic of people suffering from dyslexia, such as to frequently transpose and omit letters, numbers, and formulas in his writings and to scramble sentences. Dyslexic people do not have to be poor students. Many of the brightest people suffering from dyslexia are able to compensate so well for their affliction that they perform brilliantly in their early education and are only confronted with a real problem when they enter college.

It is not that uncommon for dyslexics who have trained themselves to cope with their affliction, to develop uncannily efficient visual memories which aid in reading and comprehending large quantities of information much faster than is typical. Adversely, some Dyslexics may show a natural dislike of reading and, in consequence, compensate by developing unique verbal communication skills, inter-personal expertise, and leadership skills. Different people adopt different strategies for living with the same affliction.

Hence many prominent corporate leaders list minor to severe dyslexia among their childhood disabilities. Those include Richard Branson (Virgin Enterprises), Henry Ford, Ted Turner (AOL Time Warner), John Chambers (Cisco), as well as prominent statesmen: Winston Churchill, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John F. Kennedy, and successful actors: Tom Cruise, and Whoopi Goldberg.

The list above indicates that those who show reading difficulties in childhood can also cope well with their deficiency later in life and become avid readers and skilled writers. Research shows that intense training in dyslexics helps them use the right part of their brain to take over the limited functionality in the left part.

Physiology and Treatment

Even a few weeks of intense phonological training (e.g. breaking down and rearranging sounds to produce different words) can help noticeably improve reading skills. Unlike in normal adults, phonological training shows an increase in the activity in the right temporoparietal cortex.

This part of the brain works in spatial tasks and may be the main compensatory structure in phonological training. This is the sister region of the left temporoparietal cortex responsible for visual motion processing which is underactive in many dyslexics. The earlier the phonological regimen is taken on, the better the overall result. Advanced brain scans could identify children at risk of dyslexia before they can even read.

In 1979, anatomical differences in the brain of a young dyslexic were documented. Albert Galaburda of Harvard Medical School noticed that language centers in dyslexic brains showed microscopic flaws known as ectopias and microgyria. Both affect the normal six-layer structure of the cortex. An ectopia is a collection of neurons that have pushed up from lower cortical layers into the outermost one. A microgyrus is an area of cortex that includes only four layers instead of six.

These flaws affect connectivity and functionality of the cortex in critical areas related to sound and visual processing. These and similar structural abnormalities may be the basis of the inevitable and hard to overcome difficulty in reading.

Several genetic regions on chromosomes 1 and 6 have been found that might be linked to dyslexia. In all likelihood, dyslexia is a conglomeration of disorders that all affect similar and associated areas of the cortex. With time, science is likely to identify and classify all individual suborders with benefits to our understanding of how low-level genetic flaws can affect the wiring of the brain and enhance or reduce a particular component of human mental capacity.

Some studies have concluded that speakers of languages whose orthography has a strong correspondence between letter and sound (e.g. Korean and Italian) have a much lower incidence of dyslexia than speakers of languages where the letter is less closely linked to the sound (e.g. English and French). (Source: " class="external">http://www-tech.mit.edu/V121/N12/shorts2_12.12w.html)

Whether today's models of dyslexia are correct or not, the main lesson of dyslexia is that minor genetic changes affecting the layering of the cortex in a minor area of the brain may impose inborn limitation on the overall intellectual function. At the same time, dyslexia shows that the brain exhibits a strong ability to compensate for its inborn or acquired limitations, and intense training can often result in miraculous turnabouts

Lack of Public Support

In the United States and in Great Britain there is a lack of support and a general disinterest in the learning disabilites of children in public schools. This has recently lead to legal action by private parties against public schools in the United States and in Great Britain.

In English law, the failure of schools to diagnose and provide remedial help for dyslexia became grounds for personal injury litigation in 1999 following a House of Lords decision in the case of 'Pamela Phelps.

The British Disability Discrimination Act also covers dyslexia.

"In some cases, people have 'coping strategies' which cease to work in certain circumstances (for example, where someone who stutters or has dyslexia is placed under stress). If it is possible that a person's ability to manage the effects of the impairment will break down so that these effects will sometimes occur, this possibility must be taken into account when assessing the effects of the impairment."

[Paragraph A8, Guidance to the Definitions of Disability]

Also see picture thinking