Neuroimaging study finds extensive brain rewiring–in just six months–among illiterate adults learning to read and write

— Learn­ing to read and write rewires adult brain in six months (New Sci­en­tist): “Learn­ing to read can have pro­found effects on the wiring of the adult brain – even in regions that aren’t usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with read­ing and writ­ing. That’s what Michael Skei­de of the Max Planck Insti­tute for Human Cog­ni­tive and Brain Sciences…

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Study: Dyslexia not related to intelligence. Implications for discrepancy model?

NIH-fund­ed study finds dyslex­ia not tied to IQ (NIH press release): — “Regard­less of high or low over­all scores on an IQ test, chil­dren with dyslex­ia show sim­i­lar pat­terns of brain activ­i­ty, accord­ing to researchers sup­port­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health. The results call into ques­tion the dis­crep­an­cy mod­el — the prac­tice of classifying…

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Brain Development Through Bilingual Education and Activities Requiring Self-Control

How To Help Your Child’s Brain Grow Up Strong (NPR): — “Kids who learn two lan­guages young are bet­ter able to learn abstract rules and to reverse rules that they’ve already learned,” says Aamodt. “They’re less like­ly to have dif­fi­cul­ty choos­ing between con­flict­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties when there are two pos­si­ble respons­es that both present them­selves. They’re…

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Changing our Minds…by Reading Fiction

(Edi­tor’s Note: we are pleased to bring you this arti­cle thanks to our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Greater Good Mag­a­zine.) Chang­ing our Minds By imag­in­ing many pos­si­ble worlds, argues nov­el­ist and psy­chol­o­gist Kei­th Oat­ley, fic­tion helps us under­stand our­selves and oth­ers. ‑By Kei­th Oat­ley For more than two thou­sand years peo­ple have insist­ed that read­ing fic­tion is good…

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