Learning disabilities were historically regarded as something about which little could be done, as the belief was that the brain was unchangeable and functions lost couldn't be restored. The belief was that you were either "slow" or "mentally retarded" which landed you in "special-ed" classes.
The standard treatments were to develop "compensations", or "work arounds". If you couldn't read well, then listen to audiotapes. If you were "slow", take more time to finish tests.
One such folk was Barbara Arrowsmith (great TEDx vid). While her auditory and visual memory were 99th percentile and her frontal lobes were well developed, her brain and body were asymmetrical. Exceptional abilities co-existed with areas of disability.
Her speech region, Broca's area, malfunctioned, so words were difficult to pronounce. She had no spatial reasoning or projection, so didn't know where she was moving or where her arms and legs or other objects were, so she ran into things, tripped and stumbled and was frequently lost. With a very narrow span of vision, she could only see a few letters at a time when she read.
She couldn't understand the relationships between different symbols so couldn't understand grammar, math, logic and "cause and effect", so she couldn't connect behavior w/consequences or read the hands on a clock (yes, there are clocks w/hands). She was dyslexic and reversed letters.
She used her good memory to get through schools, but had no understanding of what she learned. As she didn't understand what was happening around her, she was filled w/doubt and uncertainty. A suicide attempt failed.
When Barbara got to graduate school, she went into child development and was great at picking up nonverbal cues in child-observation studies and was asked to teach the course. In her 1982 master's thesis, she proved that the "compensation/work-around" model wasn't working; learning-disabled children were not improving.
Then she discovered the work of Alexander Luria, a Russian Freudian psychoanalyst. When Stalin manifested, Luria had to recant his psychoanalytic "ideological mistakes", and go to medical school. Luria's detailed case histories led to a book, "The Man With a Shattered World", detailing the deep brain trauma of a wounded Russian soldier, Lyova Zazetsky.
Reading Luria's book, Barbara said "He is describing my life". Luria discovered that the bullet damaged the area in the left hemisphere (TPO) where three major perceptual lobes - temporal (sound/language), parietal (spatial relationship/sensory integration) and occipital (visual images) meet. Barbara now knew where her problem was, but not what to do about it.
A paper serendipitously appeared by Mark Rosenzweig @ UC Berkeley on rats in environments with different levels of stimulation. Richer environments produced more neurotransmitters and better blood supplies. This was one of the first demonstrations of neuroplasticity, i.e. activities can change the brain.
Barbara then knew what to do...work directly on her weakest functions. As she couldn't understand what the hands on a clock meant, she made hundreds of cards with different clock faces and times. Amazed when it began to work, she added more hands for seconds and fractions. Soon she could read clocks w/anybody.
The most startling discovery was that her difficulties w/other symbolic relationships also improved rapidly from her clock exercises. Now, she could understand grammar, math, logic and conversation. (There's a great story in the TEDx vid on finally being able to understand what a book said.) Soon she raised her spacial recognition and projection abilities so she stopped tripping and running into things.
Barbara and another "learning-disabled" grad student opened a school in Toronto, named Arrowsmith, using these simple techniques. As neuroplasticity was not yet accepted and high-tech brain scans were not yet developed, it met w/much skepticism.
What happens @ Arrowsmith? First there are extensive assessments to identify precisely which functions are weak and addressable. Then specific exercises are developed. Some kids are given computer exercises reading complex clocks to improve symbolic understanding, grammar, logic and math as Barbara had done.
Students who forget instructions listen to CDs and memorize poems to improve their auditory memories. The average folk can remember seven unrelated items...these folk can only remember two or three. This is a big cognitive disadvantage.
Folk who apparently have frontal lobe deficits and appear disorganized and unable to learn from mistakes, have programs to strengthen their planning, goal-forming, and persistence.
Other kids study letters from unfamiliar alphabets, like Urdu or Farsi (IME Sanskrit also works), to strengthen visual memories and the brain's ability to recognize/remember complex shapes quickly.
Others wear left eye patches and trace intricate lines and Chinese letters, forcing visual input into the right eye, and strengthening the problem area, the left premotor cortex. Writing becomes better/faster, speech even/smooth and reading better, all from the brain's changes.
As we do less and less writing, the changeable brain, in its "use it or lose it" mode, de-emphasizes some functions. Typing, thumbing, or printing (TTP), we make each letter separately. When writing, the brain has to process and coordinate more complex movements. W/TTP, reading slows and spoken sentences are shorter and simpler as the brain shifts valuable real estate elsewhere.
Removing these writing, reading and memory skills from the standard school curricula because they were "boring", "too difficult", and "not relevant" as TTP has replaced them, has also had significant impacts on presentations.
Open, spontaneous, engaging presentations w/o notes have been replaced by PowerPoints boringly read word-by-word, directly from the screen..."the ultimate compensation for a weak premotor cortex" as Norman Doidge noted in "The Brain That Changes Itself", a strongly-recommended treatise on neuroplasticity.
It is worth noting that the new TED(x) recommendations for presentation slides strongly discourage the use of "text heavy slides" or "slides with more than one point" for just this reason.
The results from Arrowsmith's simple exercises are "life-transforming". A 13-year old entered w/third-grade level math and reading skills, and had been told that he would never improve. Ten different "learning disability" schools were unsuccessful. After Arrowsmith, he graduated from college and works in venture capital (no jokes, plz).
A 16-year old went from a first-grade to a seventh-grade reading level in 14 mos.
As we all have some weaker brain functions, which may have a profound effect on our lives, professional and personal, these simple approaches can work for anyone. Barbara has helped adult artists, courtroom lawyers and university students.
IME, an equally important message is one we saw in K. Anders Ericsson's research in the blogpost "Are 10,000 hrs needed for awakening? NO. How to practice "better"...". It is critical to focus your developmental efforts on your weakest areas, and not keep doing what you already do well as there is little opportunity there for further improvement.
Before "my" page turned, i had great resistance to, and no demonstrated ability for Sanskrit, chanting, memorizing texts, or devotional practices. However, as the Universe would have it, each of these manifested and understanding broadened and deepened. These previously weak areas continue to yield much fruit.
 |
| Barbara Arrowsmith Young |
The standard treatments were to develop "compensations", or "work arounds". If you couldn't read well, then listen to audiotapes. If you were "slow", take more time to finish tests.
One such folk was Barbara Arrowsmith (great TEDx vid). While her auditory and visual memory were 99th percentile and her frontal lobes were well developed, her brain and body were asymmetrical. Exceptional abilities co-existed with areas of disability.
Her speech region, Broca's area, malfunctioned, so words were difficult to pronounce. She had no spatial reasoning or projection, so didn't know where she was moving or where her arms and legs or other objects were, so she ran into things, tripped and stumbled and was frequently lost. With a very narrow span of vision, she could only see a few letters at a time when she read.
 |
| What time is it? |
She couldn't understand the relationships between different symbols so couldn't understand grammar, math, logic and "cause and effect", so she couldn't connect behavior w/consequences or read the hands on a clock (yes, there are clocks w/hands). She was dyslexic and reversed letters.
She used her good memory to get through schools, but had no understanding of what she learned. As she didn't understand what was happening around her, she was filled w/doubt and uncertainty. A suicide attempt failed.
 |
| Alexander Luria |
When Barbara got to graduate school, she went into child development and was great at picking up nonverbal cues in child-observation studies and was asked to teach the course. In her 1982 master's thesis, she proved that the "compensation/work-around" model wasn't working; learning-disabled children were not improving.
Then she discovered the work of Alexander Luria, a Russian Freudian psychoanalyst. When Stalin manifested, Luria had to recant his psychoanalytic "ideological mistakes", and go to medical school. Luria's detailed case histories led to a book, "The Man With a Shattered World", detailing the deep brain trauma of a wounded Russian soldier, Lyova Zazetsky.
 |
| TPO junction A little further back from circle |
A paper serendipitously appeared by Mark Rosenzweig @ UC Berkeley on rats in environments with different levels of stimulation. Richer environments produced more neurotransmitters and better blood supplies. This was one of the first demonstrations of neuroplasticity, i.e. activities can change the brain.
 |
| Rats' brains changing |
Barbara then knew what to do...work directly on her weakest functions. As she couldn't understand what the hands on a clock meant, she made hundreds of cards with different clock faces and times. Amazed when it began to work, she added more hands for seconds and fractions. Soon she could read clocks w/anybody.
The most startling discovery was that her difficulties w/other symbolic relationships also improved rapidly from her clock exercises. Now, she could understand grammar, math, logic and conversation. (There's a great story in the TEDx vid on finally being able to understand what a book said.) Soon she raised her spacial recognition and projection abilities so she stopped tripping and running into things.
Barbara and another "learning-disabled" grad student opened a school in Toronto, named Arrowsmith, using these simple techniques. As neuroplasticity was not yet accepted and high-tech brain scans were not yet developed, it met w/much skepticism.
What happens @ Arrowsmith? First there are extensive assessments to identify precisely which functions are weak and addressable. Then specific exercises are developed. Some kids are given computer exercises reading complex clocks to improve symbolic understanding, grammar, logic and math as Barbara had done.
Students who forget instructions listen to CDs and memorize poems to improve their auditory memories. The average folk can remember seven unrelated items...these folk can only remember two or three. This is a big cognitive disadvantage.
Folk who apparently have frontal lobe deficits and appear disorganized and unable to learn from mistakes, have programs to strengthen their planning, goal-forming, and persistence.
 |
| Sanskrit, English, Urdu in New Delhi by Mike Lynch |
Other kids study letters from unfamiliar alphabets, like Urdu or Farsi (IME Sanskrit also works), to strengthen visual memories and the brain's ability to recognize/remember complex shapes quickly.
Others wear left eye patches and trace intricate lines and Chinese letters, forcing visual input into the right eye, and strengthening the problem area, the left premotor cortex. Writing becomes better/faster, speech even/smooth and reading better, all from the brain's changes.
 |
| Evolutionary texting adaptation |
Removing these writing, reading and memory skills from the standard school curricula because they were "boring", "too difficult", and "not relevant" as TTP has replaced them, has also had significant impacts on presentations.
Open, spontaneous, engaging presentations w/o notes have been replaced by PowerPoints boringly read word-by-word, directly from the screen..."the ultimate compensation for a weak premotor cortex" as Norman Doidge noted in "The Brain That Changes Itself", a strongly-recommended treatise on neuroplasticity.
It is worth noting that the new TED(x) recommendations for presentation slides strongly discourage the use of "text heavy slides" or "slides with more than one point" for just this reason.
 |
| Norman Doidge |
The results from Arrowsmith's simple exercises are "life-transforming". A 13-year old entered w/third-grade level math and reading skills, and had been told that he would never improve. Ten different "learning disability" schools were unsuccessful. After Arrowsmith, he graduated from college and works in venture capital (no jokes, plz).
A 16-year old went from a first-grade to a seventh-grade reading level in 14 mos.
As we all have some weaker brain functions, which may have a profound effect on our lives, professional and personal, these simple approaches can work for anyone. Barbara has helped adult artists, courtroom lawyers and university students.
IME, an equally important message is one we saw in K. Anders Ericsson's research in the blogpost "Are 10,000 hrs needed for awakening? NO. How to practice "better"...". It is critical to focus your developmental efforts on your weakest areas, and not keep doing what you already do well as there is little opportunity there for further improvement.
Before "my" page turned, i had great resistance to, and no demonstrated ability for Sanskrit, chanting, memorizing texts, or devotional practices. However, as the Universe would have it, each of these manifested and understanding broadened and deepened. These previously weak areas continue to yield much fruit.
Don't you just love synchronicity? Here you are writing about Dr. Norman Doidge and who do think was interviewed last night on The National (news) on CBC television up here in Canada but him. (You can watch the interview by going to their Facebook page for Feb. 13, 2015.) Among other things, he spoke about the rewiring of the brain in people with Parkinson's Disease, who could relearn how to walk by actually thinking about walking as they did it (i.e. lifting the leg, swinging it forward, dropping it, bringing weight onto that leg, then repeating with the other mindfully, and doing this with each step). They cited a case study of a man in South Africa who did just that. He also spoke about the nature of the mind as a distributive proposition rather than being located in neurons. By the way, the whole terminology of neuro-plasticity is somewhat incomplete, since without glial cells, there would be no blood supply to feed the growth of new neuronal circuits. It begs the question who what part of the brain is really in charge of its new growth... neurons or glial. The same was found in an experiment looking a memory function with rats on cannabis. Glial cells were key, not neurons. Thanks for your post. Paul L. Vancouver, BC
ReplyDeleteHi Paul,
DeleteYes, i find that "my life" is just a series of synchronous, serendipitous events and precognitions. It may have always been that way, and i just didn't notice it, but it is apparent now. As one surrenders more and more to the Dance, it is amazing to just watch it/Her dance it.
Am a big Doidge fan, obviously. He is an excellent and compelling writer, and has won Canada's National Magazine Gold Award four times, and "The Brain That Changes Itself" was a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year.
His combination of research @ Columbia, and training in psychiatry and psycholanalysis, with his great anecdotal story-telling is unusual. He is deservedly getting much praise in Canada and in the US, for what is a very important and timely message of the existence of neuroplasticity. i have not yet gotten a copy of his new "The Brain's Way of Healing", but it should be fascinating as well.
Yes, you are totally correct on glial cells and i have seen the argument on "who's brain is this anyway?" between neurons and glial cells. The role of glial cells, as you know, is just becoming fully appreciated and demonstrated in different studies and applications. There is much discussion of it, particularly with regard to many of the neurodegenerative diseases.
As Doidge is now discussing "The Brain's Way of Healing", perhaps he will move into glial cells.
stillness
gary
Hi Gary, I just finished reading your book "happiness beyond thought".. You said that you wake up @ 4 am to practice for about 2 hours. I wonder, how many hours of sleep do you get to be able to do that?
ReplyDeleteThanks! :)
Hi Anonymous. i normally went to bed @ 10 pm or so, so i got about 6 hrs/night. The yoga and meditation practices actually gave me some of the same benefits as having those additional hours as sleep. It was not an exact hour-for-hour offset, but it was close.
DeleteNot doing the yoga and meditation would have been a bigger loss than missing the sleep.
Trust this is useful.
stillness
Hi Gary. Thanks for another very interesting article. I had a question for you regarding content. I have a (very) small personal blog in Spanish focused mainly on things that interest me, and I would love to make stuff like this available to my Spanish-speaking readers (I am a translator). However, I don't know what your stance is on the matter. It would all be properly credited and attributed of course, with a link to the original article. But I understand if you don't feel comfortable with the idea. Just thought I'd ask. :-) Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous. Great that you found it useful. my stance on folk using my "stuff", as long as they attribute it and don't charge for it, is that it is all open and free to whoever might find it useful.
DeleteThe youTube videos, of which there are now 79, are all "Creative Commons - reuse allowed". Yoga U Online is publishing my posts on their website, as have the Science and NonDuality folk. Best with your efforts. stillness