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\r\n\r\nIn recent decades, there has been a growing body of neuroscientific research clarifying what dyslexia is, but sometimes even that can feel a bit inaccessible. How is a parent to make sense of it all?<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Welcome to A Parent\u2019s Guide to the Neuroscience of Dyslexia!<\/p>\r\n\r\n
In this article, we\u2019re going to dig into the brain science behind dyslexia to help you understand what dyslexia is and how it impacts your child\u2019s reading and spelling journey so that you can make the best educational decisions for your child and be your child\u2019s number one advocate.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Basics of the Human Brain<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
Let\u2019s start with a few basics about the human brain and where language processing - including reading and spelling - happens.<\/p>\r\n\r\n There\u2019s an area on the left side of the brain, in the general vicinity of the left ear, that\u2019s called the Left Occipital-Temporal Cortex. Within that region, there are a few highly specialized areas responsible for processing all forms of language - listening, speaking, reading, and writing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Two small areas in that region are called Broca\u2019s Area and Wernicke\u2019s Area, and they are responsible for speech sounds.2<\/sup> There\u2019s another small area that\u2019s responsible for hearing phonemes, or letter sounds. Finally, there\u2019s an area of the brain that plays a huge role in reading and spelling called the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), also called the brain\u2019s \u201cletterbox.\u201d3<\/sup><\/p>\r\n\r\n There won\u2019t be a quiz on this, and it\u2019s okay if you don\u2019t remember what each area is called, but it\u2019s helpful to see that the majority of language processing and reading activities happen in this very small, very specialized area of the brain. Knowing about these areas of the brain will be helpful in understanding what dyslexia is.<\/p>\r\n\r\n To understand what dyslexia is, though, we have to first understand how the neurotypical brain (one without dyslexia) learns to read.<\/p>\r\n\r\n From birth, children begin taking in language. They become familiar with the particular sounds of their mother tongue, and they begin to distinguish language sounds from other types of sounds. In brain scans, infants as young as 2 months old showed this language specialization. When sentences were spoken to these infants, the language centers of the brain were activated on the scans. That means that even though babies don\u2019t yet understand the meaning of the words being spoken, their brains are already able to distinguish language from other types of sounds.4<\/sup><\/p>\r\n\r\n As children continue to grow and develop, their language skills become more refined. Not only can they listen and comprehend, but they begin to speak - first in babbles and eventually in fully-formed sentences. As they begin learning to read, the VWFA (Visual Word Form Area) of the brain becomes activated.5<\/sup><\/p>\r\n\r\n In every child\u2019s brain, the process of learning to read is a bit disorganized and scattered at first, though. As the child learns the alphabet sounds (phonemes) and begins to blend those together into words, many parts of the brain are activated, not just the language and VWFA. Areas responsible for attention, working memory, etc. are activated alongside the VWFA and other language areas.6<\/sup> That\u2019s because the brain has to work incredibly hard to take in the letters, process them, and output meaningful words, and it doesn\u2019t do it very efficiently at first.<\/p>\r\n\r\n This is why children start out by sounding out every letter and painstakingly blending those sounds together to form a word. Anyone who\u2019s taught a child to read knows how slowly the child reads at first. That\u2019s a completely normal part of the process!<\/p>\r\n\r\n However, as the child becomes more proficient at reading, the brain trims the unnecessary neural pathways in the same way a gardener prunes a tree. All of the brain\u2019s resources become increasingly more centralized in that language area of the brain, and the brain forms \u201cshortcuts\u201d and specializations. This continuously happens as the child\u2019s reading proficiency increases so that by the time a person has reached adulthood and is an advanced reader, only a few highly specialized areas - especially the VWFA - of the brain are activated during reading. The brain has developed \u201csuper highways\u201d that make reading an automatic process.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Dr. Jacob Santhouse, LCPC, compares it to taking the scenic route versus taking the highway.7<\/sup> When a child is first learning to read, it\u2019s almost as if their brain is taking a scenic drive on a rural mountain road. Instead of taking a shortcut or using the highway, the early reader\u2019s brain goes the long way around, so it takes longer and there are more opportunities for mistakes. However, as the child becomes increasingly fluent in reading, the brain begins to find faster and more efficient \u201croads\u201d to process written information.<\/p>\r\n Eventually, as the child becomes a fluent reader, the brain has developed very fast, very efficient neural \u201chighways\u201d for reading. Instead of taking circuitous mountain roads, the brain takes a fast interstate directly from Point A to Point B.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n As you may have already guessed, the dyslexic brain is different. Instead of forming those fast neural \u201chighways\u201d for reading, a dyslexic child\u2019s brain pretty much always takes the scenic mountain roads and, therefore, always has to work much harder when reading.<\/p>\r\n\r\n In brain scans, neuroscientists have found that in 9-year-old readers identified as having dyslexia, the VWFA and the areas responsible for speech sounds aren\u2019t activated as expected when they\u2019re shown words. Yet other non-language areas of the brain are activated.8<\/sup> This means that instead of information going quickly from Point A to Point B, it has to go the long way around and is processed by non-specialized areas of the brain. This makes it very difficult for dyslexic learners to automatize their reading (or read seemingly automatically).<\/p>\r\n\r\n While the human brain has an amazing capacity to compensate when one area doesn\u2019t work as expected, it does cause some challenges. In addition to the dyslexic child\u2019s brain already having to work harder to read, it doesn\u2019t always correctly sequence the letters or even process them in the correct direction. Because of that, we see signs of dyslexia, such as mixing up the letters in a word, like reading \u201cfrom\u201d as \u201cform.\u201d We also see letter reversals, such as switching b and d. It isn\u2019t that the child can\u2019t see the letters; it\u2019s that the brain\u2019s letterbox is getting mixed up.<\/p>\r\n\r\n If you think about taking a rural mountain road that you\u2019re unfamiliar with, you can imagine how many wrong turns you might make or how easy it would be to get turned around, especially if the roads aren\u2019t very well marked. Reading for the dyslexic child is similar. Because the brain doesn\u2019t go directly from Point A to Point B, there\u2019s more room for error, especially because the dyslexic brain has to rely on regions of the brain that aren\u2019t necessarily specialized for language processing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n It\u2019s also tricky because a lot of children with dyslexia have less working memory than their non-dyslexic peers, which means they simply cannot hold as much information in their minds at once.9<\/sup> Add that to the fact that instead of processing information using the shortest possible route, their brains must process information the \u201clong way around,\u201d and you can see why reading is such a struggle.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Thankfully, there is a lot of hope for children with dyslexia. At one time, it was believed that dyslexic individuals couldn\u2019t learn to read and spell. We now know that\u2019s not true, and we have the neuroscience to back it up!<\/p>\r\n\r\n The National Reading Panel has conducted groundbreaking research to discover that reading and spelling programs that \u201cteach phonics systematically and explicitly\u2026are the most effective\u201d for students with dyslexia. The most successful programs incorporate these five essential components, called \u201cThe Big Five:\u201d explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, systematic phonics instruction, techniques to improve fluency, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension.10<\/sup><\/p>\r\n\r\n That\u2019s where All About Reading<\/a> and All About Spelling<\/a> come in.<\/p>\r\n\r\n Our programs not only incorporate \u201cThe Big Five\u201d components needed for dyslexic students to become proficient in reading and spelling, but they take a multisensory approach<\/a> that uses multiple pathways to the brain to make reading and spelling accessible for all students. In Part 2 of A Parent\u2019s Guide to the Neuroscience of Dyslexia, we\u2019ll discuss how our research-based programs help rewire a dyslexic student\u2019s brain so it doesn\u2019t remain stuck on those circuitous mountain roads forever.<\/p>\r\n\r\n![\"Diagram](\"https:\/\/blog.allaboutlearningpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Brain_-_Brocas_and_Wernickes_area_Diagram-JPG.jpg\")
\r\nHow the Neurotypical Brain Learns to Read<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\nFluency and Automatization in Reading<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
![\"Mother](\"https:\/\/blog.allaboutlearningpress.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Final-Blends-Photo-3-JPG.jpg\")
\r\n\r\nThe Dyslexic Brain is Different<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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Cerebrum. 2013 Jun 3;2013:7. PMID: 23847714; PMCID: PMC3704307.<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\nThere is Hope for Children with Dyslexia<\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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