dyslexia

Trend: Directly addressing (not just accommodating) learning disabilities

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brain_constructionNew take on learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties: change the brain (Komo News):

“A new school in Red­mond might change the way we think about learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. Instead of teach­ing kids how to accom­mo­date a dif­fi­cul­ty, the school hopes to actu­al­ly change the brains of stu­dents, elim­i­nat­ing the dis­abil­i­ty alto­geth­er. [Read more…] about Trend: Direct­ly address­ing (not just accom­mo­dat­ing) learn­ing disabilities

New market report analyzing the growing Digital Brain Health market 2012–2020

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We are proud to release today what we believe is our best mar­ket intel­li­gence report so far, track­ing how ful­ly auto­mat­ed appli­ca­tions designed to assess, mon­i­tor and/ or enhance cog­ni­tion and brain func­tion­ing are trans­form­ing brain health, and health overall.

Here are a few exam­ples of what we mean by Dig­i­tal Brain Health, select­ed from among the 5 Mar­ket Lead­ers and 10 Com­pa­nies to Watch in 2013/2014 iden­ti­fied through our com­pre­hen­sive analysis.

  • A 30-minute online brain health assess­ment and per­son­al­ized brain fit­ness pro­gram used by large com­pa­nies like Nation­wide Insur­ance and Accen­ture to improve employee’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and men­tal wellness
  • An online cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram offered by sev­er­al large AAA chap­ters to mem­bers age 50+ to improve dri­ving safety
  • A com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py offered by the NHS in the UK as a first-line inter­ven­tion for anx­i­ety and depression
  • A ful­ly dig­i­tal head­set and plat­form that mea­sures basic brain states (such as lev­el of atten­tion) and is being used to help peo­ple med­i­tate bet­ter and reduce ADHD symptoms
  • An iPad-based assess­ment that tracks cog­ni­tive per­for­mance over time to help detect con­cus­sions among football/ hock­ey play­ers and mil­i­tary per­son­nel [Read more…] about New mar­ket report ana­lyz­ing the grow­ing Dig­i­tal Brain Health mar­ket 2012–2020

Why Being Young for Grade Increases Odds of ADHD Diagnosis and Stimulant Medication

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ADHD is the most com­mon­ly diag­nosed neu­robe­hav­ioral dis­or­der in chil­dren and sub­stan­tial evi­dence indi­cates that bio­log­i­cal fac­tors play an impor­tant role in its devel­op­ment. For exam­ple, although the exact mech­a­nism by which genet­ic fac­tors con­vey increased risk for ADHD remains unclear, the impor­tance of genet­ic trans­mis­sion has been doc­u­ment­ed in a num­ber of pub­lished studies.

Even though bio­log­i­cal fac­tors are wide­ly regard­ed as impor­tant in the devel­op­ment of ADHD, no med­ical or bio­log­i­cal test is rec­om­mend­ed for rou­tine use when diag­nos­ing ADHD. Instead, [Read more…] about Why Being Young for Grade Increas­es Odds of ADHD Diag­no­sis and Stim­u­lant Medication

Dr. Tracy Alloway on Getting From Research to Product: Bringing Reliability and Validity to Commercial Ventures

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Dr. Alloway will dis­cuss Get­ting From Research to Prod­uct: Bring­ing Reli­a­bil­i­ty and Valid­i­ty to Com­mer­cial Ven­tures, at the upcom­ing 2012 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Sum­mit (June 7–14th, 2012).

Tra­cy Alloway, PhD, is an Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor at Uni­ver­sity of North Flori­da. She devel­oped the only stan­dard­ized work­ing-mem­o­ry tests for edu­ca­tors pub­lished by Psy­cho­log­i­cal Cor­po­ra­tion, [Read more…] about Dr. Tra­cy Alloway on Get­ting From Research to Prod­uct: Bring­ing Reli­a­bil­i­ty and Valid­i­ty to Com­mer­cial Ventures

Update: Time to become mental capitalists and invest in our brains?

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Time for the Novem­ber edi­tion of the month­ly Sharp­Brains eNewslet­ter, fea­tur­ing a wealth of resources and insights on how to invest in our brains, includ­ing top­ics such as brain health, med­i­ta­tion, neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy, brain train­ing games, chemo brain, dyslex­ia, neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty, cog­ni­tive bias­es, stress, and more. Not to for­get a cou­ple of fun teasers. Enjoy!

Brain Fit­ness Q&A Sessions:

The Big Picture:

New Research:

New Books:

Brain Teasers:

Thank you for your inter­est and atten­tion and have a great December.

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

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NIH-fund­ed study finds dyslex­ia not tied to IQ (NIH press release):

At left, brain areas active in typ­i­cal­ly devel­op­ing read­ers engaged in a rhyming task. Shown at right is the brain area acti­vat­ed in poor read­ers involved in the same task.

- “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 a child as dyslex­ic on the basis of a lag between read­ing abil­i­ty and over­all IQ scores.”

- “In many school sys­tems, the dis­crep­an­cy mod­el is the cri­te­ri­on for [Read more…] about Study: Dyslex­ia not relat­ed to intel­li­gence. Impli­ca­tions for dis­crep­an­cy model?