Dealing With Dyslexia Through Brain Training

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 15 to 20% of American students have dyslexia. It would take a while before parents would acknowledge that their children are actually suffering from serious problems, thus denying them of proper treatment. The good news is, parents can consider brain training to help children cope with these problems.

Contrary to what most people believe, people with dyslexia do not necessarily have low intellect. There are some dyslexics that became successful in their chosen fields, like Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Alexander Bell and even journalist Anderson Cooper.

There is no standard treatment for dyslexia, it is based on the person’s need and condition. Once a child is diagnosed with dyslexia, the school where it is enrolled is required to create an Individualized Education Program (IEP) that would suit the child’s needs. The IEP will provide you with a clear understanding of the disabilities, methods on dealing with it and of course, the objectives of the program.

In a case study performed by the Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities in the University of Haifa in Israel, dyslexic college students showed improvements in their memory and reading performance after undergoing brain training. The creators of the training believed that through improving the memory capacity, more information could be retained, detected and used by the mind.

Meanwhile, a research led by Psychology professor John Gabrieli from the Stanford University, discovered that dyslexia could actually be connected with a defect on a neuron function. Those who have difficulty in reading would often have an abnormal function of the neuron’s myelin.

By understanding this neurobiological aspect of dyslexia, the researchers were able to design a kind of training which helped dyslexics become better readers after eight weeks of the training. In the training, the dyslexics were subjected into understanding the basic sounds of language rapidly.

While training with sounds, a brain imaging was performed. The areas which do not function properly, becomes activated and showed normal performance for the first time. Aside from the problem areas of the brain, other regions were also maximized during the training.

This training is important to help them distinguish the difference between the letters. One of the biggest problems of dyslexics is how they distinguish letters with almost similar sounds. The words are broken into sounds and they are exaggerated or slowed down to put emphasis n the sounds.

After the training, the students participating experienced an increase in their language and reading exams. And since the children were able to improve on their reading skills, they also became more confident.

The best option would be to get a cognitive trainer or get into a learning center that has the ability to handle dyslexics. Tutoring would allow them to use different exercises based on their needs. These centers would also have knowledge of different dyslexia tools, which are of course, in the form of brain exercises and games. Brain training would also help in identifying weak points and how they could be improved.