A study by Anthony J. Krafnick and colleagues2 from Georgetown University discovered these relevant findings, providing insight into a potential way to offset the deficits associated with dyslexia with changes at the brain level.

Guest Post by Buddhika Bellana

Krafnick and colleagues used a training program, known as Seeing Stars3, specifically designed to help the children incorporate an integrated-modality approach to improve reading and comprehension. Reading text can be a strenuous task, relying heavily on a child’s verbal abilities. The program used in this study involved a more multisensory approach. Not only were the children taught to read text aloud, they were taught to simultaneously visualize each letter and word and draw them out in the air with their finger.

Instead of solely focusing on a child’s verbal ability, this training program also drew upon their visual and motor capacities, potentially providing a more concrete and thorough understanding of the letters and words they were taught to read. The intensive 8-week training progressed step-by-step: first focusing on letters, progressing to one-syllable, and finally multi-syllable words.

Before and after undergoing the 8-week training program, children received MRI scans (magnetic resonance imaging; a non-invasive method to look at structural changes in the brain) to compare for training-induced brain changes. Actual changes in brain volume were seen in areas of the brain associated with various reading abilities, areas that are typically under-activated in dyslexia. These fundamental changes in the brain were accompanied by improvements in reading skills and language skills.

MRI scans were also taken 8-weeks after training and many of these brain changes and improved performance persisted over the two months without any training.

This study may pave the way for future research into practical applications of similar training programs in educational settings, potentially providing a strategy to overcome the learning problems associated with dyslexia. Unlike previous approaches only attempting to modulate the superficial reading deficits, this study may prelude research into a more brain-based approach in treating dyslexia.

GUEST AUTHOR: This guest post was authored by Buddhika Bellana who is a student specializing in psychology at York University. He is currently a research assistant at the Cognitive Development lab at York University and at the Rotman Research Institute. His research interests especially lie in the neuropsychology of the aging brain.

References:

1. Siegel, L.S.. 2006. Perspectives on dyslexia. Paedriatrics and Child Health. 11 (9), 581-587.
2. Krafnick, A.J.; Flowers, D.L.; Napoliello, E.M.; Eden, G.F. 2011. Gray matter volume changes following reading intervention in dyslexic children. NeuroImage. 57, 733-741.
3. Bell, N., 1997. Seeing stars: Symbol imagery for phonemic awareness, sight words, and spelling. San Luis Obispo, CA: Gander Publishing.

With only a few days until the Brain Power Conference we’ll be spending a lot of time learning about how a child’s brain develops – and show that a parent’s interactions with a child have a major impact on cognitive development. But what about the parent’s brain?

Researchers from The National Institute of Health along with scientists from Germany, Japan and, Italy have shown that the ‘parenting instinct’ is actually a specific response wired into our brains.

Image: Science Daily

The results were enlightening: participants showed significantly more brain activity while viewing the faces of human infants than they did from adult or animal faces.

Marc H. Bornstein from Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development said that “These adults have no children of their own. Yet images of a baby’s face triggered what we think might be a deeply embedded response to reach out and care for that child”

The participants did not move or speak while undergoing the FMRI. The areas of the brain that lit up were indicative of how the brain looks when a person is about to care for an infant, showing that caregiver impulses are in fact physiological. The study reported that the areas of the brain were activated included:

“Premotor and preverbal activity — The researchers documented increased activity in the premotor cortex and the supplemental motor area, which are regions of the brain directly under the crown of the head. These regions orchestrate brain impulses preceding speech and movement but before movement takes place.

Facial recognition — Activity in the fusiform gyrus — on each side of the brain, about where the ears are — is associated with processing of information about faces. Activity the researchers detected in the fusiform gyrus may indicate heightened attention to the movement and expressions on an infant’s face, the researchers said.

Emotion and reward — Activity deep in the brain areas known as the insula and the cingulate cortex indicated emotional arousal, empathy, attachment and feelings linked to motivation and reward, the researchers said. Other studies have documented a similar pattern of activity in the brains of parents responding to their own infants.”

The research finally shows that the ‘parenting impulse’ isn’t just activated when a person has a child of their own, but are innate to the human brain. Further research in this area can not only help parents better understand their feelings but may also bring about new insight into why some parents can be neglectful or abusive, perhaps saving a child in the process.

Dr. Moreno Warms Up the Crowd On Day One (Image: TVOParent)

The Brain Power Conference is over – but the energy and commitment has just begun.

We took a few days to recover from the whirlwind of keynote presentations and workshops….and although sometimes after a big event you move right on to the next thing, in this case we find ourselves energized by the e-mails, comments and feedback.

The Brain Power Conference seemed to have touched the right notes (pardon the music reference!) with many in the audience. It seemed as if the idea that neuroscience could inform a new generation of experiences and curricula for kids isn’t so far-fetched after all!

Who knew that words like neuroplasticity, executive function, and fMRI might become part of the conversation in the teacher’s lounge or at the playground?

We still have lots of work to do. In the coming weeks, we’ll post as many materials and highlights as we can to help summarize what we all heard and learned.

In the meantime, if you have specific requests or suggestions please comment below – we’d love to hear from you and to continue the discussion. And thank you for your support and interest in the Brain Power Initiative.

We have such a jam-packed schedule of keynote presentations and workshops  - and to be honest, it can be hard to summarize what to expect! Should parents expect a lot of science? Will they leave the conference with practical tips and insight?

Brain World assures us that there’s something for everyone and they even quoted me better than I can quote myself! Have a read, and check out the full article.

The Brain Power Conference in Toronto was put together by a cross-disciplinary group of teachers, neuroscientists, psychologists and parents. Thompson believes that we’re starting to see practical ways that neuroscience will inform a revolution in childhood development and assures that the participants in this year’s conference will:

• Learn how a child remembers and how memory works and help them study
• Understand the impact of music, language on cognitive function – and why it can have such a big effect on IQ, memory and attention
• Understand how schools will start to bring neuroscience into the classroom (we have some great panels on the long-term impact on education)

How music impacts a child’s brain development will be one of the key themes at the upcoming Brain Power Conference, May 3-4 in Toronto.

Whether music makes kids smarter and what parents and teachers can do with that knowledge are some of the highlights of what attendees will learn:

Can a child’s brain be changed?

Conference chair Dr. Sylvain Moreno will explore how a child’s brain grows and develops. He’ll explain the concept of ‘neuroplasticity’ and he’ll give parents and teachers and understanding of what to watch for as a child’s brain grows and changes.

He’ll also explain why music matters – and how learning music isn’t just about acquiring a skill, but activates pathways in the brain that lead to increased intelligence and memory.

Music in the Classroom

Angela Elster and Dr. Gavin Bidelman will present findings from a study of over 400,000 students on the impact of music and arts in the classroom. They’ll explore the educational findings through the lens of neuroscience – and indirectly make a case that schools who cut music or arts programs are doing children’s brains a disservice!

Creating Creative Thinkers Through Music

Steven Couldridge of Yamaha Music Canada will lead a fun and interactive workshop highlighting a unique approach to the development of creative musical skills through age-appropriate education, group learning, and an emphasis on improvisation and creativity. What’s good for the spirit is good for the brain!

Why Music is Good for a Child’s Brain

Today’s Parent recently gave a good summary of why music is good for the brain: they called music “an all-in-one workout machine in the weight room of your kid’s brain.” The result of the musical workout? Improved IQ.

Read the background article if you want to understand some of the key topics to be presented at the Brain Power Conference!

And please join us in Toronto on May 3-4 for an exploration of a child’s brain, the impact of music (amongst dozens of other topics) and how you can help a kid develop and grow. Promo rates are still available although space is limited.

So the Brain Power Conference is the perfect fit to help parents translate that knowledge into action.

We hit the road on Sunday, meeting with parents and ‘mompreneurs’ at an event in Vaughan. It was a really great day – meeting with moms who also run their own businesses was inspiring: if you think raising a child is a full-time job, these moms raise their kids AND their businesses!

Marty Keltz Presents at Mompreneur Event

We were lucky enough to be joined by Marty Keltz, a keynote presenter at the Brain Power Conference and creator of the Magic School Bus TV show.

He gave remarks to the audience and commented that “helping a kid’s brain doesn’t need to be at the expense of creating entertainment. You can engage your child and still have a positive impact on their mind.”

Questions and Answers
One of the great things about being out meeting with parents was giving them the highlights of the upcoming Brain Power Conference and answering the question: what’s in it for me?

We thought we’d share our “top 5″ list of things that parents can take away if they attend the Brain Power Conference:

1. Understand How Different Parts of the Brain Grow and Develop
You’ve seen your child learn her first words. You’ve watched him learn his ABC’s or struggle to stack up blocks before knocking them all down again.

But what’s going on in your child’s brain? The conference will highlight how different parts of the brain develop as a child gets older – and by understanding that, help you to understand what kinds of toys or activities are best suited to different ages and stages of childhood development.

2. What’s In a School?
Choosing a school for your child can be one of the toughest choices a parent makes. What age should you enrol them in nursery school? What kind of curricula should a school offer? The conference will offer practical tips and insights and give parents the tools they need to support active dialogue with their child’s teachers.

3. Study Hard, Study Often?
It turns out that neuroscience teaches us a lot about how a child remembers – and that some of the ‘conventional wisdom’ on studying and excelling in class is wrong. Workshops at the conference will explore practical ways you can help a child to study and remember – and even increase their IQ!

2. The Structure of Reward
What role does ‘achievement’ play in a child’s development? How does positive reinforcement or reward play in helping a child’s brain to develop? It turns out there are myths and there is science that sheds insight into how a parent can encourage the right level of structure in a child’s play, and the right level of reward as they learn.

5. The Experts Don’t Have All the Answers
The Brain Power Conference brings together some of the world’s top experts on the brain, on education, on psychology and parenting. But they don’t have all the answers – a lot still rests on the school system or culture a child grows up in. But, by learning about how a child’s brain grows and develops and how a parent can help increase the capacity to learn it helps put perspective on the things a parent or teacher can or should worry about.

It was exciting to learn how many ‘Mompreneurs’ and parents plan to attend the Brain Power Conference. We hope you’ll join us too, for two days that will explore the above topics and many more: and give you practical insight into how you can increase your child’s capacity to learn.

(And for those who attended the conference – don’t hesitate to get in touch if you didn’t pick up our special discount promo code! Just e-mail us at info@brainpowerinitiative.com)

Much like learning music, it turns out that bilingualism plays, well, a dual purpose: giving kids the advantages of knowing a second language but also better preparing their brains for learning.

Having a bilingual brain means that there are often two language systems working concurrently. This can help hone the brain to suppress unneeded information and ‘train’ the brain to run more efficiently. Not only do the brains of bilingual kids weed out irrelevant information but they’re also tend to monitor there environment more effectively, this is especially true for children whom must switch languages briskly.

Image from New York Times

Why Bilingual Brains are More Efficient
“Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says researcher Albert Costa of the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain.

“It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.”

In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.”

The Times also reports on research by Dr. Ellen Bialystok who will be a keynote presenter at the Brain Power Conference, May 3-4.

“In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins — one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle. In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the blue square and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, the children were asked to sort by shape, which was more challenging because it required placing the images in a bin marked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quicker at performing this task.”

Setting the Stage for Lifelong Cognitive Fitness
The benefits of being bilingual are not spent entirely on children. Research from The University of California, San Diego details the effect of bilingualism on the elderly as well. Bilingual adults are showing increased resistance to Alzheimer’s disease, the more proficient in language skills a person is the later Alzheimer’s onsets.

Join us at the Brain Power Conference as these and other issues are explained and explored with practical tips for parents and teachers on how the findings of neuroscience can give every child a leg-up on lifelong learning.

Martha Kaiser, a neuroscientist from Yale, explains that new research shows that “the brains of people high in autistic traits aren’t coding touch as socially relevant.”

She explains that there’s a part of the brain, called the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), that makes these kids sensitive to touch. “The OFC is very important for coding reward so maybe they’re feeling the touch but in these individuals, their brains don’t code that type of touch as being as rewarding as in individuals with fewer autistic traits.”

The findings are reported in a Time Magazine article:

Yale neuroscientists recruited 19 young adults and imaged their brain activity as a researcher lightly brushed them on the forearm with a soft watercolor paintbrush. In some cases, the brushing was quick, and in others slow: prior studies have shown that most people like slow brushing and perceive it as affectionate contact, while the faster version is felt as less pleasant and more tickle-like. None of the participants in the current study had autism, but the researchers evaluated them for autistic traits — things like a preference for sameness, order and systems, rather than social interaction. They found that participants with the highest levels of autistic traits had a lower response in key social brain regions — the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) — to the slow brushing.

According to Martha Kaiser, senior author of the study and associate director of the Child Neuroscience Laboratory at the Yale Child Study Center, the STS is a critical hub of the social brain. “This region is important for perceiving the people around us, for visual social stimuli and for perceiving social versus nonsocial sounds,” she says. The current findings suggest that the region is also involved in processing social touch and that its response is linked to the individual’s social ability, she says. The OFC, in contrast, helps the brain evaluate experiences — whether something is likely to be good or bad and if it involves pleasure or pain.

The ability to be physically involved with a child can be an extremely helpful tool when it comes to teaching and parenting. Researchers are currently working on ways to help autistic children respond more favorably to touch. If introduced early on these methods could have a positive impact on a child’s life and education.

The Brain Power Conference brings together experts from the fields of neuroscience, education, psychology, parenting and media to help parents understand how a child’s brain is “wired” and what they can do to help their kid grow and develop. But the conference is nothing without our partners – and TFS, Canada’s International School, is a prime example.

Who They Are
TFS – Canada’s International School is a bilingual, co-ed school that educates students from age 2 to university entrance. TFS provides its students with an international perspective, through the combined strengths of the curricula of the Ministry of Education of Ontario, the Ministry of Education of France and the International Baccalaureate programs.

We’ve been lucky enough to have taken a tour of the TFS Toronto campus – which covers acres of ravine and school grounds near the heart of the city. What struck us about being on campus was the energy of the kids and teachers. Visiting the ‘media lab’ we saw kids learning literacy skills for this century – how to use digital media and be aware as consumers.

A Focus on Neuroeducation
TFS is am amazing partner for the Brain Power Initiative through their exploration of how scientist’s’ deepening understanding of a child’s brain can actually help in the class room. TFS has actively supported research in the field, and has recently been involved in a study that examines the “bilingual brain” (a topic to be covered in depth by our keynote speaker, Dr Ellen Bialystok).

The New York Times recently highlighted the ‘bilingual advantage’:

In terms of monolinguals and bilinguals, the big thing that we have found is that the connections are different. So we have monolinguals solving a problem, and they use X systems, but when bilinguals solve the same problem, they use others. One of the things we’ve seen is that on certain kinds of even nonverbal tests, bilingual people are faster. Why? Well, when we look in their brains through neuroimaging, it appears like they’re using a different kind of a network that might include language centers to solve a completely nonverbal problem. Their whole brain appears to rewire because of bilingualism.

Featured Presenter: Dr. John Godfrey
We’re thrilled that in addition to serving on our advisory board, TFS Headmaster Dr. John Godfrey will be presenting at the Brain Power Conference.

Dr. Godfrey is a former editor of The Financial Post; was vice president of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, which specializes in social, economic and scientific issues; is a widely published writer and co-authored The Canada We Want: Competing Visions for the New Millennium; and represented the federal riding of Don Valley West from 1993 to 2008.

Dr. Godfrey will explore how neuroeducation may play a key role in the classroom of the future, and will examine the implications for parents and on wider policy choices as Canada prepares its kids to embrace a future of lifelong learning.

Join Us
Organizations like TFS are what make the Brain Power Conference a powerful combination of voices and insights: we’re not just exploring how child’s brain is “wired” but will be explaining what it means for parents and the future of the classroom. We hope you’ll join us for this landmark event, May 3-4 in Toronto.

Babies hold lots of lessons for researchers at North Dakota State University (NDSU) and Minnesota State University Moorhead (MSUM). Some of the findings might not be a surprise – but others shed light on how a baby’s brain grows in the first year.

“Babies have better memory than most people expect,” Woods said. “And the older they get, the better they are at remembering things.”

The researchers have also learned that babies:

• Learn better if someone shows them an object before handing it to them them;
• Learn very quickly about the stability of objects;
• Learn better about the colour and pattern to toys through touching not just by looking.

MSUM is examining the connection between babies’ ability to perceive depth and the development of their eye-movement systems. What has been shown in adults is that those with eye movement deficits have trouble with depth perception.

“The question is, how do those two things develop together? What we hope to get out of this research in the future is perhaps a diagnostically relevant test that will show what babies might be at risk very early on for developing this depth-perception deficit based on their eye movement problems,” said Lisa Nawrot.

The research involves watching how babies react to things. At the Infant Cognitive Development Lab at NDSU, babies’ cognitive abilities related to attention and memory are being studied. At the Child Development Lab at MSUM, the visual perception of two- to five-month-olds is being studied.

Most of the research undertaken by NDSU looks at the ability of babies to determine whether an object is the same or different from one they just saw. Babies initially play with toys in a play area. This is followed by watching events that seem like magic such as a ball that seems to change colours as it disappears behind screen. When babies are surprised, they tend to watch longer. The researchers measure how long a baby looks at the tricks.

“We get really long looking times only if babies understand that there are two objects,” said Rebecca Woods who is with NDSU. “A lot of what we do here is try to find out how they start to learn,” said Woods.

Babies are shown a series of black-and-white dots that move across the screen. When stared at, people with normal eye movements see a simple shape pop out. Using an infrared eye tracker, researchers watch the babies watch the shapes repeatedly. When babies become bored, the stimulus is changed. Babies noticing the depth change respond by becoming interested in the object again.

“If they’re sucking on a pacifier, sometimes it will drop right out of their mouths,” Nawrot said. “It’s really a startling response.”

The project is about half-way finished.

The Brain Power Conference will share the latest research into a child’s brain and explain to parents and teachers what it means for childhood development and lifelong learning. We hope you’ll join us for this landmark event.