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Dyslexia Seen In Brain Scans of Pre-School Children
dryriver writes "Brain scans may allow detection of dyslexia in pre-school children even before they start to read, say researchers. A U.S. team found tell-tale signs on scans that have already been seen in adults with the condition. And these brain differences could be a cause rather than a consequence of dyslexia — something unknown until now — the Journal of Neuroscience reports. Scans could allow early diagnosis and intervention, experts hope. The part of the brain affected is called the Arcuate Fasciculus. Among the 40 school-entry children they studied they found some had shrinkage of this brain region, which processes word sounds and language. They asked the same children to do several different types of pre-reading tests, such as trying out different sounds in words. Those children with a smaller Arcuate Fasciculus had lower scores."
http://foscam.us/forum/hacked-t6626.html
Is the one who is in all the news.
it's just another one of natures ways of telling you your not meant for college
They lie awake all night wondering if there really is a DOG!
What I got out of the article was not that 'scans could allow early detection and diagnosis', because deploying brain-scans on children to 'detect' a disorder like this is ludicrous (due to the low base rate and high cost of imaging). What I got was that there are 'pre-reading tests' which are apparently useful to detect dyslexia - otherwise you couldn't correlate the brain imaging results with the results of those pre-reading tests, and then call the imaging a 'dyslexia test' right?
Hell, maybe the researchers could develop a battery of pre-reading tests and then look at the correlation of the tests to the smaller arcuate fasciculus to choose good diagnostic tests. Assuming that the smaller arcuate fasciculus is actually causal in dyslexia, of course.
(Note: I am broadly cynical about correlational brain imaging research such as this. It can be good. It is almost invariably overstated.)
when ever natural left handers are forced to be right handers all sorts of funny things happen.
just saying
mike
My dyslexia forced me to work harder in school at things others found easy. I was confused for a few years until I realized not everyone had my issues. Once I adapted, I started jumping grades and moving ahead. There are things about it that can be leveraged in terms of learning, after all.
Finding issues like this out early can be a blessing or a curse depending on how the parents and the school system react. If it's used to hang a 'problem learner' sign on a kid and just stick them in a corner, I say it's a curse. If it's used to support a tailored teaching environment, it would be a blessing.
Monsters inventing excuses for all of us to have "brain scans" at the earliest age possible. What could possibly go wrong with this scenario? It is phrenology, lobotomy, and 'hysteria' based illnesses all over again.
Take phrenology. For the usual cretins, this pseudo-science was justified by the fact that certain rare diseases do cause predictable cranial deformities. So, the leap could be made from "the tiniest kernel of scientific justification" to a general roll-out of such nonsense. The elites in control would love to persuade the sheeple that such examination of their children was in the best interest of the family.
Of course, the USA has always welcomed such 'Brave New World' pseudo science in its widespread medical community. Eugenics (the Nazis based their horrifying regime on false but well establish theories of 'racial purity' first developed American universities during the 19th century to justify slavery), genital mutilation of males AND females (US doctors were destroying the sexual pleasure centre of female children into the 1960s), lobotomy (came within a whisker of being universally applied to whole classes of children within the USA just like vaccines), electro-shock, chemical destruction of key brain areas- the US medical establishment has embraced them all in its time.
Up until the late 60s, young women at the best US universities were forced to strip and pose naked for photos, simply because the racist nutters that headed the academic establishments believed in the racial superiority of the "white race", and allowed vile frauds like Sheldon to run riot.
In the post war period, the US government (via a military project) paid Israel to irradiate the heads of thousands of Jewish immigrant children the Jewish authorities in Israel deemed as 'lesser' Humans because their skin was darker. The families were told the massive doses of X-rays were a 'treatment' for ringworm (a fungal infection). The depraved pseudo-scientists behind the scheme thought the radiation would 'evolve' the brains of some of the children, producing 'super' Humans (the same pseudo-science later became the basis for the origin story of The Incredible Hulk).
Had Slashdot been around during this time, the owners of Slashdot would have been promoting 'science' stories about how great the X-ray to the head project was. Today, they try to groom you to thinking government inspection of your children's brains is a good thing.
Those that want to test and label you and your children, via generic tests applied to everyone, are the same evil today as at every other time such proposals were made. There is no mystery as to the common psychology that lies behind such proposals, and the propaganda used to sell it as a good idea to the sheeple in general. You are either cattle or you are Human. If you do not comprehend the difference, go away and spend some time researching Human History. The pattern of abuse never changes, even when the excuses do.
A large percentage of dyslexia cases can be corrected through the use of colored lenses. Evidently in these cases dyslexia is caused by certain colors being transmitted to the wrong areas of the brain. Filter out these colors and a person can suddenly start reading. See irlen.com for more information. I am in no way affiliated with the site but know from personal experience that this works.
According to TFA: "It is too early to say if the structural brain differences found in the study are a marker of dyslexia." Why? Because the children in this study are still of pre-school age so they haven't been followed up. What they have shown, it seems, is that a smaller arcuate fasciculus makes you worse at tasks such as producing word sounds.
soylentnews.org
When we discovered my daughter had a reading problem, I paid for comprehensive tests, delivered the results to the school, (she had severe dyslexia -- the doctors said she probably wouldn't ever read past third grade level) and was told flatly by school officials that they didn't recognize Dyslexia as a condition. That their diagnosis (a school giving a medical diagnosis? never mind...) was that she was hyperactive and had a problem with authority. They suggested Ritalin. I pointed out that an independent psychologist hadn't found any signs of hyperactivity. They stuck to their guns.
So, maybe I'm being overly cynical, but I suspect this new test will just give them another datum to ignore.
But who knows, maybe it depends on the school system.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
See Johnny over there? He's high functioning autustic.
Little Suzy to his right? Textbook Dyslexic!
Little Ralph? Oh, very ADHD.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Sure, but did the kids later get diagnosed with dyslexia? Oh, didn't follow them that long? So we have an interesting observation pretending to be a diagnostic tool.
NFS. Who ever thought otherwise? Oh, maybe some researchers scamming your tax money.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Sigh... the scans are probably quite cheap just gotta pay for a person to run a machine that was paid for since 20 years. They just charge you an arm and a leg for them. My parents being missionsaries they live in Brazil. A few years ago due to thyroidism, unknown to us at the time. My mom had an electrocardiogram which had cost around $500 where we live in the states and there it was $50 for the same exact test and same machine in a commercially supported hospital. They bought the machines and I am sure they were sold at a profit.
That machine does nothing all day but sit there and make $50 bucks a pop ($150+ is the going rate I understand in the USA)... now how many weeks would it take to pay off that same machine here in the US I could probably count them on my hands.
I know machines need upgrades and repairs and the nurses running them have mouths to feed... but the current medical system has no mercy let alone desire to benefit mankind beyond making a quick buck.
As you're probably aware, MRI != ECG
An MRI requires a huge amount of power to run, because it needs to power an electromagnet capable of magnetically aligning atoms in the body. For one mobile scanner, this requirement is 200 amps at 480V on three-phase power. That doesn't specify actual consumption, true, but the magnet needs to be repeatedly used throughout a scan, which can be 20+ minutes.
According to a friend of mine (who a imaging researcher at an Australian hospital) a decent scanner will have a purchase cost of >$1m.
I should also point out that the people operating MRIs are not nurses.
who can't admit they have stupid kids who suck at reading.
All valid points...I do also know that MRIs are quite alot cheaper as well.
/1000) * (12/100) = $11.52 to run it for an hour at the max power draw you suggest assuming that is the electrical service requirements for the unit... it can me assumed it would actually cost much less since it is probably overrated at least by 20% and probably doesn't pull that constantly though I wouldn't be surprised if it did. Even if you left it on for a year... thats only about 100k in power bills.
.... from that it seems like it takes 2 years of school and 2 years of apprenticeship to become a MRI technician as a minumum. I think its safe to assume at least 45-50k as a base salary possibly a good bit more (I'd want someone pointing a giant magnet at my head to make decent money heh...) Thanks for the cool reply :)
Electricity is cheaper here in the US so while it is a valid point that it has a cost.. its lower here though. Electricity is so expensive in Brazil (mostly hydro power and some nuclear) that hardly anyone runs Air Conditioners and lights get run sparingly by many people even stores don't have AC them for the most part unless you are in a big box store in a large city. Another factor is most can't buy and AC so there isn't demand to sell them. I mention AC because its probably the biggest power user here in the US.
Here in the USA on average it would cost ( 200 * 480
I just looked it up and 1Kwh runs you about 0.33 Reais which is roughly 14 cents so thier costs are comparable but slightly higher and much higher relative to average wage 95% of the population.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080513200318AASqIzq
since I read that as Pre-School Children Seen In Brain Scans of Dyslexia
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
Yes. There are pre-reading tests that can detect dyslexia, and they are quite accurate. The tests that I know of are trivial to pass for non-dyslexic children, and surprisingly challenging for children who will exhibit dyslexia once they start to learn to read.
They're all about testing how well children can take words apart and put them back together in their head. I attended a presentation on this at the University of Canterbury - which if you're interested you can see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzyZquJ4260
I have two children with dyslexia, and one without. Of the two with dyslexia, one is quite a bit more severe than the other. I would judge that they are each of more or less equal intelligence, but the one with the severe dyslexia can barely write. He can talk intelligently, use his fairly extensive vocabulary, follow complex lego instructions, understand complex language when it's spoken. But he finds it very difficult to read and write.
As a parent of two "normal" children and one badly dyslexic child, and having spent the same amount of time playing, singing, reading, drawing, coloring with all three, this was obvious. By the time my dyslexic child was 2, I knew he had something going on. Before that, actually, but nothing definite until then.
Dixlecys Untie!
Silence is a state of mime.
My daughter has reading troubles that I believe were consistent with dyslexia. We voiced our concerns to the school and they told us it was a medical issue not a school issue. So we talked with her doctor who informed us that dyslexia was a school problem and not a medical problem. To have her diagnosed officially we would have to had paid a large amount out of pocket and even then the school would not do anything beyond what help she already received in her reading group. If dyslexia is so common I can't understand why it is swept under the rug like it doesn't exist.
If you check out the actual reporting from the authors (here for abstract http://www.jneurosci.org/content/33/33/13251.abstract?sid=bb49e635-09a9-4719-8462-cf027b122652) you can see that they tested three predictors for dyslexia on children who had not yet received reading lessons. Without making any claims of observing dyslexia, they noted that the size of the arcurate fasciculus is positively correlated with scores of 'phonological awareness' and no correlation with 'rapid naming' or 'letter knowledge.' Perhaps a linguist or clinician could help elucidate what those tests are actually measuring.
It could be that dyslexia is a grouping of somewhat different brain/processing abnormalities that have similar behaviors. If that is the case, then brain imaging of the size of arcurate fasciculus could predict whether treatment aimed at increasing phonological awareness would have any effect. If you haven't had an intro neuropsych course you may not have heard that the arcurate fasciculus is a primary connection between auditory cortex and motor representations - thought to translate hearing into replying. Folk who have damage to this fiber tract are typically unable to repeat back to you what they just heard. The auditory and visual conduits run in parallel in this part of the brain, so it may have bearing on sequencing of writing, not just spoken words.
i don't know karate, but i know ca-razy
As someone who could not read until 4th grade (US). Then when suddenly the glyphs stopped dancing. My tested reading level went to pre college.
I can say in my case dyslexia is in the decoding. Not the encoding of information.
I think that the statically most humans process information in a linear fassion. So if some of us have a more multidimensional thought process it may seem our thoughts are random and even at times out of place but...
Held me back never did.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Read 'Why children can't read' by Dianne McGuinness, if you're interested.
Please read the book 'Why children can't read' by Dianne McGuinness, which will help your child learn to read just as well as your other ones. There is no such thing as 'dyslexia'.
You don't power off an MRI after use. It's always on except for maintenance. The reason medical bills are expensive in the US is become the medical system is crap. In good countries, the national health care system pays for your medical needs, and ensures that if you have to pay it's affordable.
The electromagnet of an MRI (or NMR machine as they were politically-incorrectly called) has a truly humongous field strength (order of 1 Tesla) and it's wound from Niobium-Tin alloy which is superconducting if you put it in a liquid Helium cooled NMR machine. So, you charge it up to the field strength it can bear without quenching, and then you just make sure to regularly top up the liquid Nitrogen (77 Kelvin = -195C) in the large Dewar barrel that surrounds the small Dewar barrel with liquid Helium (4 K).
;-)
It's a cool machine to work with
In order for it to scan and flip the Hydrogen spins in the patient or sample tube you need variations in the electromagnetic field surrounding the probe, but they just do that with radio waves coming in from the sides. You can also do more complicated stuff with magnetic field gradients but I think the gradients are really really small perturbations of the main field strength (in the order of ppm).
tl;dr: the electromagnet of an MRI / NMR is never turned off; that's a minor industrial accident called a "quench" when the Helium and then the Nitrogen boils off and the personnel rapidly leaves the room. I've heard firsthand that it gives a very unpleasant feeling that is difficult to describe.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
There's a typo in the summary, the correct spelling is "Accurate Fasciculus".
Try introducing him to Japanese or Chinese. Many dyslexic people find they may have trouble with English but not with non-alphabet based languages. Japanese is probably the easier to start with because of the three character sets used two are phonetic and there are only 48 per set (actually it's even less than that, half are just variations of the other half).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
My younger brother is dyslexic and is most definitely the smartest person I have ever met. {and I know a lot of very smart people} Aside from a couple bachelors degrees he can fix your car or any item in your house electronic or not. When he was in school they gave him this colored film to place over books he read now he has it tinted into his reading glasses. {I have no idea if they still do it but it works for him and you might ask about it}
He is also left handed, extremely eccentric, and a little weird.
I had to look it up.
http://irlen.com/index.php
On ??
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
Assuming that the smaller arcuate fasciculus is actually causal in dyslexia, of course.
This is where the utility of brain imaging comes in: it may help localize the causes of dyslexia in particular regions of the brain, guiding further research and perhaps leading to better remedial approaches to the condition.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
On the subject of Irlen Syndrome:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/128/4/e932
Which isn't to belittle your brother's achievements, but my understanding of Irlen Syndrome is that it's quackery. They diagnosed both of my kids with Irlen, but the colored overlays made no difference to their reading abilities that I could detect. It's always a warning sign when a 'syndrome' is a registered trademark.
Well, we live in New Zealand, so of all the languages in the world to learn, one or both of those is probably a good idea. I'll give it a shot.
If you ask him he will say it makes all the difference... Maybe it's a placebo effect...
Quite, and I don't want to suggest that someone who's found something that works should stop using it. But dyslexia is a tough thing to deal with, and the evidence doesn't support what the Irlen outfit want to sell, so people's money and energies should probably be channelled into support strategies that the evidence does support.
If either of my boys decide to wear coloured lenses, and claim that they help, placebo or otherwise, I'm certainly not going to stand in their way. But kids are extremely suggestible, and one should take great care with any self-reported results from them. For instance, both my boys claimed that the coloured overlays helped their reading. But they both struggled the same amount with or without the overlays, and I didn't observe any difference in either their reading speed or their accuracy.
I actually had never looked them up online before my brother is in his 30s now, and it's something he has done since grade school. He is very hard to gauge with his many eccentricities but I've not seen him struggle with reading since junior high.
Good luck. Japanese is the easier of the two, and if you go for it I suggest beginning with the katakana characters because they have a lot of loan words and they are all written with it. It can be kind of fun trying to figure out what a loan word is because they don't always fit into Japanese pronunciation that well, and of course some are not English (Japanese for bread is "pan", from Portuguese).
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The reason medical bills appear so expensive in the US are because we're still actually billed, and we get to see the results of a giant socialization of healthcare. The majority of people receive some sort of government assistance in part or in full, and the majority of everyone else still receives some form of third-party-payer care.
Parts of the industry where insurance programs aren't regulated or provided, like cosmetic surgery, LASIK eye surgery, and veterinary care, have been declining in price and cost for quite some time.
Other countries don't have lower costs. They're just hidden away. They do, however, have longer lines. (I can't name very many other countries where I can get an MRI next day.)
Wonder what the public key field is for?
This genetic disease can be abolished with application of eugenics. To bad humans cannot understand an accept eugenics. It's to help advance their own kind.
Understand that the fact that researchers have seen for themselves a physical difference in the brains of dyslexics versus non-dyslexics has invalidated McGuiness' theories on the subject of dyslexia.