Well here’s an interesting Freudian slip for you. A team from Children’s Hospital Boston announced that they could see signs of dyslexia on brain scans in children as early as 4 and 5 years old, which the lead researcher characterizes as a dyslexia paradox. Older children and adults with dyslexia have dysfunction in these same areas of the brain, which include the junctions between the occipital and temporal lobes and the temporal and parietal lobes in the back of the brain. The Fox News coverage of this has a quote from Sally Shaywitz, one of our favorite nemeses: “The beauty is spoken language can present before written language so people can look for symptoms,” said Dr. Sally Shaywitz, a director of the Center for Dyslexia and Creativity at Yale University. If you place your cursor over the highlighted word “symptoms” in the article, up pops an ad for the heartburn medication, Prevacid.
- Leonard J. Press, O.D., FCOVD, FAAO
D.Fortenbacher, OD FCOVD
Len Press
Carole L. Hong, OD, FCOVD
Carl Hillier, OD FCOVD
Stan Appelbaum, OD FCOVD
Gary L. Etting O.D. F.C.O.V.D.
Dr. Barry Tannen
Nancy Torgerson, O.D., FCOVD
LOL— that’s rich!
Comment by Lynda Rimke — January 24, 2012 @ 1:37 pm |
So I’m curious, what is REALLY going on inside “the junctions between the occipital and temporal lobes and the temporal and parietal lobes in the back of the brain”? Convergence?
Comment by Lynda Rimke — January 24, 2012 @ 1:39 pm |
Yes, a convergence of sorts, Lynda. Not the type of “convergence” we speak of with eye muscle, but convergence zones in cortical centers of the brain whose activation is based on the task at hand. The shame of it is, even though the occipital region begins this word identification process in the brain, Shaywitz conveniently looks at that function of the brain as not visual. It’s part of the language system. It would just be semantics, but she uses this as an argument to discount the significance of the visual system in dyslexia, a straw man argument if there ever was one.
Comment by Len Press — January 24, 2012 @ 4:17 pm |
Is this a turf battle? Do some of these people really believe what they espouse?
Comment by Dr. Michael Margaretten — January 24, 2012 @ 3:10 pm |
Bingo.
Comment by Len Press — January 24, 2012 @ 4:17 pm |