Neuron Learning

The Science of Learning: How Current Brain Research Can Improve Education

Optimal learning, learning styles, are the buzz words of the moment is seems.
But emotions count too.

Think about the BIG PICTURE of education; does science help learning?
And how? (HINT: its not just technology you know)

***How can we stimulate learning?

***What impact can the arts have?

***The importance of reading for your students.

***Mind Games; the negatives and positives of gaming

***Early Childhood and Disabilities, the long-term benefits of pre-school

In this report you will get a great overview of these key issues, solid evidence and
valuable links to further expert information

eSchool Media published this report The Science of Learning:

How Current Brain Research Can Improve Education.

We are happy at Neuron Learning to make this report available.
If you would like information on Fast ForWord or Reading Assistant please contact us

You can access your full copy here

After her husband's stroke, this woman left no stone unturned in her quest to bring him back

Aviva Cohen has amazing persistence in helping her husband recover from a terrifying stroke. She and Steve are a formidable pair. I am sure that Steve's hard work and attitude will not only benefit himself but also inspire others to keep battling to recover. I wish you could see the picure of them in this article in The Irish Mail. Aviva came across Fast ForWord and us after reading Norman Doidge's book "The Brain that Changes Itself". Their story is reprinted in full from the print edition of the paper........

After her husband's stroke, this woman left no stone unturned in her quest to bring him back...

By: JENNY FRIEL

AVIVA Cohen is a former university lecture and communications consultant. her husband Steve was one of Ireland's leading karate masters and ran the karate club at Trinity College — where the couple met — when he was struck down by a massive stroke. Aged only in his 50s, the stroke left him unable to speak, paralysed down his right side and severely brain damaged. Aviva, 45, has spent the last five years intensely researching and testing treatments for stroke patients. She has put together all of her findings — with case studies, references and arguments for and against various treatments — on her website, researchandhope.com. Aviva and Steve live in Lucan with their two daughters, 11-yearold Gina and five-year-old Tanya.

JUNE BANK HOLIDAY 2006 The day started so beautifully — we did some karate and weight training in the morning and then went shopping for new clothes we needed for my nephew's upcoming Bar Mitzvah. When we got home, Steve played for ages in the garden with Gina, while I was inside with baby Tanya. We were so happy.

In the afternoon, myself and the girls developed some kind of vomiting bug so I put them to bed. Steve started getting sick much later. He was flattened by it — he'd never really been sick before and it was strange for me to see him like that.

He was sitting down on the couch and I had to go up and change the girls' duvet covers again.

When I went to get him to help me, he was asleep but he was kind of shuddering. I thought he was snoring but it must have been him having the stroke and I didn't know. I left him to sleep, but when I went into him again he was just staring at his hand. I thought he was joking at first.

I thought it was crazy but I called an ambulance. They took him to Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, Dublin. All the way there I kept thinking to myself that it was strange but really wasn't expecting anything too bad — I thought it might have been a minor stroke and he'd maybe need some medication.

When I got in there Steve was in an isolated room. I got chatting to one of the young doctors and was showing her photos of the girls on my phone when I saw her eyes filling up with tears. I knew then we were in trouble, that it was serious.

They brought me down to see him. He took his mask off and said 'I love you', and put the mask back on. They were the last words I would hear him speak for some time.

THREE DAYS LATER We were told that Steve probably wouldn't die but it was such a strange day as it was also my nephew's Bar Mitzvah. My sister, Belinda, was dying of breast cancer and it was her last wish that we would all be together for this. I had to go, but it was extraordinarily hard.

A karate student of Steve's drove up from Galway to sit with him through the night while I went to the party. It was so surreal, watching people eating, drinking and dancing. People were asking about Steve but I just told them I couldn't talk about it.

JULY 2006 Steve was moved into Unit 4, an old TB section of the hospital. Overcrowded and understaffed, it was like something out of an old war movie. He had lost all his speech and couldn't make a sound. We used to talk the whole time to each other, we were like kids.

When we started living together we'd stay up all night talking and be wrecked the next day. At his karate allowance protects heart more classes in Trinity he was unbelievably charismatic and afterwards everyone would gather round him to listen to him talk about karate, Japanese history and about life — he was so articulate. One of the hardest things is talking to somebody who can't talk back.

He was almost infantile, he couldn't recognise the simplest object. Or when you tried talking to him, he couldn't follow what was going on at all. He was paralysed down his right side, from his right shoulder everything was gone, down to his right leg.

I'd get to the hospital every morning about 6am. Steve's niece was fantastic minding the girls and the mothers from the school did a rota to take care of them when she couldn't — I had so much support.

I spent my time in the hospital reading as much as I could about strokes and different treatments — I asked all of the consultants for papers to read. The speech therapist and the occupational therapist were both brilliant. I would ask anyone who would listen to give me something to read — the heavier the better, I didn't care. I was trying to learn as much as I could.

SEPTEMBER 2006 Steve was moved to the rehabilitation centre in Dún Laoghaire. An MRI showed up to 50 per cent of his brain had dark areas — you don't know if it's dead or dormant.

After a few months at the centre, we definitely started to notice some improvement — he could follow a conversation with me if I took my time, he could walk very slowly with a stick and, funnily enough, he understood time.

MID DECEMBER 2006 My sister Belinda died in the hospice. She had gone into hospital a week after Steve's stroke and from there to the hospice in Harold's Cross. I didn't get to see her nearly as much as I wanted.

I tried to visit her as often as I could, I phoned her every day and we'd spend an hour on the phone. It was very hard trying to balance everything: Steve, my sister, taking care of the girls.

LATE DECEMBER 2006 Steve came home for good just in time for Christmas. We tried to make it as normal as possible, but it was hard. Gina asked me if her daddy was a baby now, I had to spend some time trying to explain to her what was wrong. Because Steve couldn't get up the stairs he had to sleep downstairs. The first night he came home I set my mobile phone to ring the house phone so whenever he needed me all he'd have to do is press the green button. He took the phone and dropped it straight into his glass of water.

I sat down on the floor and I cried, I just wasn't sure I could do it — Tanya needed her nappy changed, Gina needed attention, my mother was in the hospital with an angina attack. I thought I was living in a nightmare and I couldn't wake up. But I just had to get on with things — you either lie down and die or you get up and get on with it.

JUNE 2007 I came across hyperbaric oxygen therapy on the internet. I read all the clinical trials and they showed great promise. It's like going into a plane: they put a mask on you, you sit there for an hour and they decompress you. It forces the air into the blood — because the air is under pressure, the oxygen can get into the plasma as well as the red blood cells. The capillaries in the brain are tiny so it forces the oxygen through those as well, so it can reignite dormant brain tissue. It was €100 a session but you need to go every four days and must do up to 30 treatments. I used all our savings but we ran out of money after 24 treatments.

The therapy made a big difference, Steve was able to follow conversations and use the remote control for the TV. Although there was no physical improvement, it was our first big breakthrough.

JULY 2007 Steve had a routine scan on his right carotid artery, which provides the main blood supply to the brain. His left had been completely blocked, which is what caused his stroke. Even though he was so physically fit, he had bad cholesterol. For years he had eaten a lot of junk food and he had been a smoker, but gave up when we had Gina.

Because he had been living a much healthier lifestyle, he never thought to have his cholesterol checked — it was the biggest mistake of his life. The scan showed that his right artery was 95 to 97 per cent blocked. He had to have emergency surgery — if he didn't, he would definitely die. After the operation he lost most of the mobility he had gained in the rehabilitation centre.

Being back in the wheelchair was devastating for Steve, but there really was no other choice.

OCTOBER 2007 My mother saw a television documentary on zolpidem, a miracle drug that can wake some people up out of a coma or a stroke. I asked my doctor if Steve could try it.

He said yes, that if ever somebody asked they would prescribe it, it's on the market and it's licensed. But we were never told about it. I started to wonder about why people weren't told about these things and what else was out there that we could try. Steve tried the drug but it didn't do anything for him. It was disappointing but every time we tried a new treatment I gave myself a big pep talk: 'It probably won't work, but we have to try it, otherwise we'll never know, but don't expect too much.'

Reading about zolpidem I learned that it only works for a very small percentage of people. But when it does it has a huge affect and it's so cheap. I thought it was amazing how much stuff was out there that people didn't know about.

This is where the idea for the website began, bringing together all the information and making it accessible.

JANUARY 2008 I read about transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) online and decided to ring the professor researching the treatment. I got through to Vincent Walsh inLondon and spent hours on the phone with him.

He said was in the very early stages of research but to send him Steve's details and he would pass them on to everybody he knew working in the area to see if anybody could help. It was an amazing feeling to ring this professor who has written books and to get all this feedback.

JANUARY 2009 My brother gave me a book, The Brain That Changes Itself — about new treatments and neuro-plasticity, which says the brain is pliable and can rebuild itself. This is different to what we've been told up to now, which is that the brain can't be repaired and you have to learn to live with the damage. Neuro-plasticity is used with the belief that even a damaged brain can be repaired to some extent. It gave us enormous hope One of the techniques I read about was Fast For-Word, a computer literacy programme aimed at kids that slows down the words, making them easier to take in. Steve did it for months, and things improved a lot for him in terms of his ability to follow multiple speakers in conversations and his ability to respond to questions. He was also processing things a lot faster.

MAY 2009 I decided to give up work. Taking care of Steve, researching treatments, raising the girls — it was all too much. I never seemed to have a chance to breathe. It was a huge relief.

JULY 2009 Steve went to Düsseldorf for adult stem cell therapy. One of his karate students went with him. It took me two years to do enough research to trust the therapy and we had to raise over €8,000. He left on Monday and the first extraction of bone marrow from his hip was later that day. He recovered until Wednesday when they injected treated cells through a lumbar puncture into his spinal column. On Friday, he came home and the next morning I said, 'Steve move your hand.' He made a fist and bent his elbow. I burst into tears and Steve was very emotional too. It doesn't work for everybody — we were lucky. The quality of Steve's life improved immediately, his walking was a lot better and he could speak a few words. He could say my name.

MARCH 2010 I read about a U.S. trial using the drug levodopa on stroke patients. It helps signals to pass through the neurons and through the brain and is usually used as a drug to treat Parkinson's. After talking to our consultant about it, he did his own research. He then came back and said they'd do a one-week trial. Within days, Steve was walking better. After two or three weeks he was walking up to two or three miles a day — what a breakthrough.

FEBRUARY 15, 2011 Our website, researchandhope.com, was launched. Web designer Paul McDonnell did an amazing job. At the moment it just has a stroke section but I hope to launch sections on Parkinson's disease, acquired brain injury and Alzheimer's.

The research being done on pain control could also be of phenomenal help to people. I've also put together an online magazine for family carers. The first instalment of Carers' Sanctuary Magazine is sponsored by Boyne Valley Honey and will be launched next month. I'm looking for more sponsors for the main website as I'm desperate to get as much research done as I can.

It's been a lot of hard work but I didn't have a choice. Anyone who met Steve loved him — he is funny, intelligent and charismatic. He left school at 11 but was the most wellread man I've ever met and I've worked in universities everywhere. That brain — you couldn't just leave it sitting in that body.

Reading program returns in Queens

here is an article about a school in New York returning to Fast ForWord. The schools that work with us do very well in improving their students' skills. This is because of not only the programme but the comittment of the teachers, parents and students to make it work.

You can read the full article and comments here

BY NICHOLAS HIRSHON  DAILY NEWS WRITER NEW YORK Tuesday, February 26th 2008, 4:00 AM

Parents and kids at PS 87 in Middle Village are happy that a computer program that helps learning-disabled kids has won a reprieve with new funding.

A computer program - hailed for improving the reading skills of learning-disabled kids - will return to a Queens school this fall after a 2-1/2-year hiatus, its principal said. Public School 87 in Middle Village won praise from parents in the late 1990s after first signing up for Fast ForWord - language exercises designed for children with conditions like dyslexia.

But budget cuts forced an end to software upgrades a few years ago, Principal Caryn Michaeli said. The school lost out on new features as well as regular curriculum and tech support.

Last year, PS 87 mom Lucy Accardo heard Fast ForWord could help her 8-year-old learning-disabled daughter, Alessia. This month, Accardo helped convince local pols to foot the $10,800 bill to reinstitute the program.

"I'm ecstatic. I feel like a kid at [Walt] Disney World," said Accardo, 33, predicting Fast ForWord will improve Alessia's reading comprehension abilities and overall confidence.

"This is a hidden secret," she added, "and it's a shame no one knows about it."

Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Forest Hills) will contribute $8,000 to the project, a spokesman said. State Sen. Serphin Maltese (R-Glendale) pledged $4,000. Any cash left after Fast ForWord payments will go toward new school computers, Michaeli said.

The intensive program "develops brain processing efficiency" through daily exercises, according to the manufacturer's Web site.

Among the product's fans is former PS 87 parent JoAnne Scichilone, who believes her dyslexic sons - Ricky, 13, and Joey, 16 - significantly benefited from the program.

"It's my charge now to make sure everybody who needs it gets it," said Scichilone, 36. "We just started seeing improvement, improvement, improvement."

Michaeli said she would have funded Fast ForWord, but it didn't fit into her $6,000 hardware budget, which is set by the city.

"We have to make sure we can staff teachers and stuff like that before external programs," Michaeli said.

But Hevesi and Maltese chipped in. Maltese even suggested he will fund Fast ForWord at more schools if it's a success at PS 87.

"A program like this could really make a difference in a kid's life," he said.

Irish Times Article

Following a learning curve New Lives: After years overseas John and Joyce Kerins return home with another plan, writes Sylvia Thompson. There is a widely held notion that if you stay in a country for more than five years, you are less likely to leave. Such a notion is probably based on the belief that we will have found enough reasons to stay or to go within that time period. Interestingly, Cork couple John and Joyce Kerins have lived in various parts of the world, but they never stayed much longer than five years in each place. "We're back in Cork now about two years and I'd say we'll give it about another three before we consider moving on," says John Kerins who runs computer-based reading and language skills centres with his wife, Joyce. The Kerins met and married in their early 20s and set off to London in the mid-1980s like many Irish people of their generation. "I studied chartered accountancy with the view that it would be a good passport for travelling," says John. Meanwhile, Joyce did a course in Montessori teaching in England and worked as a Montessori teacher in London. "It was great fun. London was like home from home then. We still have lots of friends there. We bought an apartment while we were there and then sold it which put on the accelerator to move out." An opportunity to work as the finance director with Pepsi with responsibility for the Middle East and Africa arose for John. The head office was in Dubai so they moved there but travelled around Africa a lot. "Our two children, Chloe (15) and Rory (13) were born while we were in Dubai," says Joyce. "It was a great place to be with small children - there was home help, lots of new parks, beautiful beaches and the shopping was great." While in Dubai, John left his job at Pepsi and started his own business, marketing and sampling health products in supermarkets in the Middle East. "This was a whole new world for me. It was a rough and rugged place to do business in. You never knew where the roads would end, whether your orders would arrive on time and you were dependent on translators and interpreters for all your business." The Kerins also lived in Dubai during the Gulf War. "American companies were very security conscious and many families were moved to Cyprus. We lived for six weeks in a hotel in Limisol but moved back when the threat lessened," explains John. Another job offer for John - this time with Coca-Cola - presented the Kerins with the option of living in Moscow. "I'd no interest in going there so we made a deal that we'd fly to London to do our Christmas shopping and go check out the offer in Moscow," says Joyce. One month later, the family moved to Moscow. "It was my favourite place to live even though I hadn't been keen to move there," says Joyce. "The Russians are wonderful people. They have a great ability to share and enjoy the moment. There was also a great sense of camaraderie among the expats there." While in Moscow, Joyce started a Montessori school and also pursued a new interest in art, visiting artists in their studios. "Artists were subsidised in Russia. They got good education and privileges but with the collapse of the economy, they had to get more commercial. I bought a lot of art in Russia." The collapse of the rouble in 1998 turned the attention of the Kerins family back to Europe. "The economy changed overnight and there was an exodus of expats out of Moscow. We had three great years there and we had to decide what to do," says John. Barcelona beckoned and they moved to live in a Catalan village overlooking the Maesme coastline. "We were in the mountains surrounded by vineyards, overlooking castles and the sea. It was beautiful," says Joyce. John began "buying and selling private language schools across Europe, which he says he financed from "savings" as his salaries in Moscow and Dubai were tax-free which allowed him to do so. Meanwhile, Joyce got to know some artists in Barcelona and organised tours of studios for visitors and international residents. "Barcelona is full of artists. It was interesting to watch the trends and begin to see artists who only exhibited and sold their paintings in the United States," she says. While the Kerins always came back to Ireland for six weeks during the summer, Joyce had a yearning to come home to live. "The children were at an age that they didn't know where they belonged. I felt it was important they had an anchor, a base and an identity," she explains. "I also felt I needed to come home and recharge my batteries. I knew I wouldn't grow old in Barcelona but I don't think I'll grow old here either." On their return to Cork city, they immediately noticed how things had improved. "When we left, Cork was a derelict city. Now, it is confident and there is a nice sense of prosperity." While doing business deals on foreign language schools, the Kerins came across a computer-based reading/language skills package which they felt they could bring to Ireland. The highly structured, repetitive learning system known variously as Neuron Learning or Fast ForWord was already being used in up to 30 countries around the world. The Kerins bought the licence to train practitioners in the approach in Ireland and Britain. "We train and supervise practitioners who deliver the package to families and schools. It involves children working on their reading and language skills at a computer every day for about an hour. With it we have seen children improve their reading in four to six weeks," says John. So with their children in secondary schools in Cork city, the Kerins are staying put.for now. Latin America and China are on their horizons. "I've really enjoyed moving around. We've great friends around the world," says Joyce. "The children love Ireland but they often say that they look forward to travelling and working abroad again."

Brainpower Summit

Brainpower summit reveals new research for lifelong education

By The Times-Union, Florida

Imagine what would happen if every man, woman and child in Duval County could learn faster, think more clearly and retain more of what they've seen and heard.

, No this isn't science fiction. What's happening today in the field of brain-based research could have a positive impact on literally everyone in our community, from preschool to our elderly population.

That is why Duval County public schools and our partners are hosting 500 local leaders from the education, health care, government and business sectors this Thursday and Friday at a free, two-day summit at the Prime Osborn Convention Center.

National and local experts - the ones making the breakthrough advances in neuroscience - will be here to help these Jacksonville leaders answer one important question: Can we improve the brainpower of our entire community?

Traditionally, it was thought that the human brain became "hard-wired" at an early age and after that could no longer grow or change.

The brainpower you had around ages 3 to 5 was all you were ever going to get, end of story.

But now, breakthroughs in neuroscience research reveal that the brain can continue to develop and improve throughout one's lifetime. And that type of news has the potential to affect every kind of community service offered to Duval County residents.

Realizing the truth about our "transformable" brains wipes away myths that have done us a disservice for decades.

Think it's inevitable that your memory will weaken as you age? Wrong.

According to neuroscientist Steven Miller, exercising the brain, good nutrition and adequate sleep can delay the decline, reverse it or, best of all, keep us at the peak of our abilities.

The research also offers a solution for dropouts, many of whom feel that the system gave up on them.

Indeed, some educators consider at-risk adolescent students to be set in their ways and think that all that can be done is to back off and offer lower-level alternative tracks.

But adolescence is the second-fastest growth phase for the brain; the areas that will control decision making and reasoning are being established during this time. Clearly, it is not the time to "back off."

Great strides forward are being tallied here by Nemours' BrightStart! Initiative that focuses on early identification of preschoolers at risk for dyslexia.

For those who need it, the free program offers intensive educational instruction to prepare these youngsters for success in kindergarten.

Nemours' results are impressive.

Two-thirds of the at-risk preschoolers moved to the normal range of early literacy skills after intervention.

In conjunction with the Jacksonville summit, Nemours is hosting a presentation by the dean of the Harvard Medical School, Joseph B. Martin.

This past year in a number of our Duval County schools, success stories came to life in students using Fast ForWord, a technological intervention that grew from recent research.

It was not unusual for Duval County students to advance their reading level significantly after a few months with the program.

Neuroscience research can influence every aspect and phase of life, from preparing preschool children for the competition of academics and future employment to the type of treatments provided for stroke or trauma victims.

I'm excited to say those changes are coming to Duval County, thanks to a forward-thinking School Board and dedicated staff.

The summit this week will educate leaders on practical ways in which this research can serve the people of Jacksonville.

Experts such as Martin, Michael Merzenich of the Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences at the University of California San Francisco, Paula Tallal of Rutgers University and Laura Bailet of Nemours BrightStarts! will be on hand to help us understand the potential of this new body of knowledge.

It is possible for every man, woman and child in our county to learn faster, think more clearly and remember more of what they've seen and heard.

We can help students who think the system has given up on them.

We can stop and even repair certain types of mental deterioration.

The brain is our frontier for the 21st century, and I have every confidence that we will build a new and better world from our discoveries.

Joseph Wise is superintendent of Duval County public schools.

Brain Plasticity in Newsweek

Rewiring the brain

The scientists are not so naive as to think they have discovered a magic wand that can turn animosity into compassion and hatred into benevolence, but the tarantula definitely raised their hopes. Over the years psychologists Phillip Shaver and Mario Mikulincer had uncovered more and more evidence that people’s sense of emotional security shapes whether they become altruistic or selfish, tolerant or xenophobic, open or defensive. Once upon a time, that would have been that, for whatever their roots such traits were thought to be, by adulthood, as hard-wired as a computer’s motherboard.

But with the new millennium scientists were finding that brain wiring can change, even in adults. That got Shaver, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and Mikulincer, at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, thinking: could they activate unused or dormant circuits to trigger the sense of emotional security that underlies compassion and benevolence?

To find out, they gave volunteers overt or subliminal cues to activate brain circuitry encoding thoughts of someone who offered unconditional love and protection—a parent, a lover, God. The goal was to induce the feeling of security that makes it more likely someone will display, say, altruism and not selfishness. It worked. People became more willing to give blood and do volunteer work, and less hostile to ethnic groups different from their own.

OK, so they didn’t all sign up to work in Darfur. But as recently as a decade ago, proposing that an adult brain could be rewired for compassion without experiencing a life-altering epiphany would have been career suicide for a neuroscientist. Not anymore. Experts are overthrowing the old dogma that, by the ripe old age of 3, the human brain is relatively fixed in form and function. Yes, new memories could form, new skills could be mastered and wisdom could (in some) be gained. But the basic cartography of the adult brain was thought to be as immutable as the color of your eyes.

This “neurological nihilism,” as psychiatrist Norman Doidge calls it in his recent book, “The Brain That Changes Itself,” “spread through our culture, even stunting our overall view of human nature. Since the brain could not change, human nature, which emerges from it, seemed necessarily fixed and unalterable as well.”

But the dogma is wrong, the nihilism groundless. In the last few years neuroscientists have dismantled it pillar by pillar, with profound implications for our view of what it means to be human. “These discoveries change everything about how we should think of ourselves, who we are and how we get to be that way,” says neuroscientist Michael Merzenich of the University of California, San Francisco. “We now know that the qualities that define us at one moment in time come from experiences that shape the physical and functional brain, and that continue to shape it as long as we live.”

The brain remains a work in progress even on so basic a parameter as its allotment of neurons. For decades, scientists assumed that adding new neurons to this intricate machine could only spell trouble, like throwing a few extra wires into the guts of your iPod. But in 1998 Peter Eriksson of Sweden’s Sahlgrenska University Hospital and colleagues discovered that brains well into their 60s and 70s undergo “neurogenesis.” The new neurons appear in the hippocampus, the structure deep in the brain that takes thoughts and perceptions and turns them into durable memories. And studies in lab animals show that the new neurons slip into existing brain circuits as smoothly as the Beckhams onto the Hollywood A list.

Brain structure is also malleable, recording the footprints of our lives and thoughts. The amount of neural real estate devoted to a task, such as playing the violin, expands with use. And when an area of the brain is injured, as in a stroke, a different region — often on the mirror-image side — can take over its function. That overthrew the long-held view called “localisationism,” which dates back to 1861, when French surgeon Paul Broca linked the ability to speak to a spot in the left frontal lobe. But contrary to the belief that particular regions are unalterably wired for specific functions, even one as basic as the visual cortex can undergo a career switch. In people who lose their sight at a young age, the visual cortex processes touch or sound or language. Receiving no signals from the eyes, the visual cortex snaps out of its “waiting for Godot” funk and reactivates dormant wires, enabling it to perform a different job.

If something as fundamental as the visual cortex can shrug off its genetic destiny, it should come as little surprise that other brain circuits can, too. A circuit whose hyperactivity causes obsessive-compulsive disorder can be quieted with psychotherapy. Patterns of activity that underlie depression can be shifted when patients learn to think about their sad thoughts differently. Circuits too sluggish to perceive some speech sounds (staccato ones such as the sound of “d” or “p”) can be trained to do so, helping kids overcome dyslexia. For these and other brain changes, change is always easier in youth, but the window of opportunity never slams shut.

From these successes, neuroscientists have extracted a powerful lesson. If they can identify what has gone wrong in the brain to cause, say, dyslexia, they might be able to straighten out aberrant wiring, quiet an overactive circuit or juice up a sluggish one. It won’t happen overnight.

But UCSF’s Merzenich believes we have glimpsed only the surface of the ability of the brain to change. “The qualities that define a person have a neurological residence and are malleable,” he says. “We know that in a psychopath, there is no activation of brain areas associated with empathy when he sees someone suffering. Can we change that? I don’t know exactly how, but I believe we can. I believe that just as you can take a 17-year-old and put him through basic training, inuring him to violence, we can take a person who is insensitive and make him sensitive to others’ pain. These things that define us, I’m convinced, can be altered.” Only more research will reveal how easily, and how much.

But what of the genes that shape our disposition and temperament? Here, too, malleability rules. As is often the case, this effect is easiest to detect in lab animals. Rats develop starkly different personalities depending on how they are reared. Specifically, if Mom is attentive and regularly licks and grooms them, they become well-adjusted little rodents, mellow and curious and non-neurotic mouse or rat. If Mom is neglectful, her pups grow up to be timid, jumpy and stressed out. Once, this was attributed to the powerful social effects of maternal care. But it turns out that Mom’s ministrations can reach into the pups’ very DNA. Maternal neglect silences genes for receptors in the pups’ brains, with the result that they have few receptors and hence a hair-trigger stress response. Maternal care keeps these genes on, so the pups’ brains have lots of receptors and a muted stress response. Inattentive moms also silence the genes for estrogen receptors in their daughters’ brains; the females grow up to be less attentive mothers themselves.
-SHARON BEGLEY(Newsweek)