Guild Gallery September 2016

They lack basic reading, writing and numeracy skills essential to everyday life according to analysis for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.  The Foundation said the figures painted a troubling picture of people being let down by the education system or left behind in the modern economy, with little opportunity to improve their skills.  It comes ahead of their strategy to solve UK poverty, which will be published next month.

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In September, publisher W.F. Howes, will publish an edition of the book for dyslexic readers. It will be published using specialist fonts and paper, with a suitable layout and glossary, so all readers can enjoy the book.  The Dyslexic Readers’ Edition of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child features blue text printed on a beige background, slightly thicker paper, larger letters, wider margins and a simple sans-serif font throughout. Research shows that this format is less distracting for those with the condition. A glossary that spells characters’ names and wizarding terms phonetically is included for readers who might be discouraged by unfamiliar words.

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All the Tom Gates series of books – the latest, Super Good Skills (Almost), is set during the school holidays – contain space for doodling and games, plus places to comment and useful advice (like how to trick your sister into thinking you haven’t eaten the last Caramel Wafer biscuit). More than just a story, these books are as actively engaging as possible. No wonder teachers, parents and children are in love with them.  “I didn’t know I was dyslexic at school, but I remember being a year behind,” says Pichon. 

A turning point was when an American friend of her mother sent a humorous book called The Bad Speller. “My work had always been covered in red pen – my spelling is shocking but that cheered me up. It wasn’t that I didn’t like books. I loved them. I just took longer to read than anyone else.”  Pichon admits that she could never have planned to create a series like Tom Gates. “I just kept thinking, if I was that age, what would I have liked to read? “When you think back to your own childhood, it’s worth remembering your memories aren’t childish. They are of things that were very important to you. That’s what I draw from.” 

From the age of nine, Sheikh Hamad was taught at Mark College Somerset in the UK, a specialist school for children with learning difficulties. He spent 19 years in Britain but when he returned to the UAE he realised that there were still many stigmas attached to dyslexia in this country, with many people mistaking the condition for laziness.

He envisaged a clinic to help parents and children and to raise awareness of dyslexia.  The Royal European Pediatric Clinic in the J3 Mall in Dubai, will give seminars to parents to help them understand the learning difficulty and to look out for signs of the condition in their children. Sheikh Hamad also works with Dyslexia International, a non-profit organisation linked to Unesco that serves the interests of children and adults with reading difficulties."I am honoured to be with them and be given the title of advocate for children and adults with dyslexia world wide, and I will be in Unesco representing them," he said.

Dr Antonio Martins, chief medical officer at the clinic, said that learning disabilities were a challenge to society because 20 to 25 per cent of children suffered from them. He hoped his role at the clinic would give children an opportunity in society because these individuals have difficulty in school and often leave early, making it difficult to integrate."

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A new study from MIT reveals that a brain region dedicated to reading has connections for that skill even before children learn to read.

By scanning the brains of children before and after they learned to read, the researchers found that they could predict the precise location where each child’s visual word form area (VWFA) would develop, based on the connections of that region to other parts of the brain.

Neuroscientists have long wondered why the brain has a region exclusively dedicated to reading — a skill that is unique to humans and only developed about 5,400 years ago, which is not enough time for evolution to have reshaped the brain for that specific task. The new study suggests that the VWFA, located in an area that receives visual input, has pre-existing connections to brain regions associated with language processing, making it ideally suited to become devoted to reading.

The MIT team now plans to study whether this kind of brain imaging could help identify children who are at risk of developing dyslexia and other reading difficulties.

“It’s really powerful to be able to predict functional development three years ahead of time,” Saygin says. “This could be a way to use neuroimaging to try to actually help individuals even before any problems occur.”

A new study led by University of Texas at Dallas researchers shows that the gene contributes to poor speech processing and dyslexia.  While previous studies have tied the DCDC2 gene to dyslexia, Dr. Michael Kilgard, a neuroscientist at UT Dallas and one of the study’s co-authors, said the new findings are the first to demonstrate that the gene is required for normal auditory processing of complex speech. 

According to Kilgard, there are two theories about the cause of dyslexia: a visual or memory theory, and the auditory theory. “This study puts more weight on the side of the auditory theory,” he said.“We now have evidence that strongly suggests that people with dyslexia don’t actually hear all of the sounds they need to hear,” he said. “If you have trouble hearing the sounds in your language, you will have trouble learning to read later,” he said. “Armed with this information about a genetic link, we may be able to determine who is at risk for reading problems before they have trouble — before they even start learning to read.” 

A web reading app specially designed for people with dyslexia, learning disabilities, visual impairment and even senior citizens has been developed by two Indian teenagers. The app, called Oswald, allows users to customize how web pages will look in their browser. It can be downloaded for free in the Chrome web store.

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Learning difficulties are more common in children conceived during winter months, new research has found.

A study led by the University of Glasgow discovered the seasonal pattern was observed in children who had autism or conditions such as dyslexia.The correlation is being linked to low vitamin D levels in women who conceived between January and March. Prof Jill Pell, director of the Institute of Health and Wellbeing at the university said: "We weren't able to measure vitamin D in these children, but it is a plausible explanation. "We know that vitamin D is essential for healthy brain development in babies, and the first few weeks in pregnancy are a critical period when the brain develops.

"In the United Kingdom in the winter months we don't have enough sunlight for our bodies to actually produce vitamin D and other studies that have been in animals have confirmed that if you have animals that are low in vitamin D their offspring have brain problems and if you give vitamin D they are avoided."

Reading is a relatively modern and uniquely human skill. For this reason, visual word recognition has been a puzzle for neuroscientists because the neural systems responsible for reading could not have evolved for this purpose. “The existence of brain regions dedicated to reading has been fiercely debated for almost 200 years,” said Avniel Ghuman, an assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurological Surgery. “Wernicke, Dejerine, and Charcot, among the most important and influential neurologists and neuroscientists of the 19th century, debated whether or not there was a visual center for words in the brain.”

In recent years, much of this debate has centered on the left mid-fusiform gyrus, which some call the visual word form area. A recent study by neuroscience researchers addresses this debate and sheds light on our understanding of the neurobiology of reading.

The team studied epilepsy patients who agreed to have electrodes implanted in their brains. Their main goal was to reduce seizures, but it gave doctors and scientists an opportunity to also examine how their brains decipher written words. Epilepsy surgeon Mark Richardson performed the procedures.

“In some patients with epilepsy that doesn’t respond to medication, the only way we can potentially stop the seizures is to locate the place in the brain where they’re starting,” Richardson said.

Richardson said they used the electrodes to stimulate different parts of the brain, map their functions and find the connection to seizures. During the study, they also used those electrodes to stimulate the parts of the brain used for reading and recognizing words.

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