Well worth reading Mike Merzenich's blog Click here
I reproduce it here so that you can see what he says.
"As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my grandaughter Leila's neighborhood
public elementary school in Oakland, California is being reconstructed at
all deliberate speed — and I emphasize the word 'deliberate' — after it was
largely destroyed by an arsonist. Because schools and institutions in
general have just lost the skill of doing anything FAST, much less on an
actual schedule, it won't be open in time for the start of school. But it's
not ALL bad news! Two benefactors have joined forces and decided to give
Peralta School a computer cart and Fast ForWord software to jump-start their
little brains, beginning at the start of the 2007 school year! Their BRAINS
can go faster, even while the Oakland Unified School District can't. This
gift of hopefully-sharper kid brains shall hopefully make the temporary
lodgings or the Peralta School family shared with high school kids just a
little bit easier to take!
Chris recently submitted a comment in which he stated that Fast ForWord
training does NOT address the underlying problems of dyslexia (which he
lists as including memory deficits, diminished manual dexterity, and ADHD).
You're wrong twice, Chris. In the first place, the problems are more
fundamental than these; THEY (and a host of other limitations) stem from a
more fundamental weakness in how the brain represents information in detail,
and at 'high speed'. Second, THA*T(THOSE) MORE FUNDAMENTAL NEUROLOGICAL
WEAKNESS(ES) IS PRECISELY WHAT THIS PROGRAM IS DESIGNED TO ADDRESS*. And
that is EXACTLY why it impacts ALL of these abilities (as well as a helluva
lot of others).
At the same time, like any other practical training strategy that makes any
neurological sense (there are damned few of those out there), Fast ForWord
can still get better! In fact, a new version for elementary school kids that
shall be faster, still broader in its positive impacts, and almost
certainly, still more effective, is now being constructed by Scientific
Learning scientists, engineers, and artists. If and when its greater
benefits are demonstrated by controlled studies (which is, of course, a
pre-requisite for their commercial release) you'll be able to see them for
yourselves!
A final note: I know that I just glossed over the* claim that this kind of
listening training improves manual dexterity*. We have strong evidence of
this (e.g., handwriting samples are very significantly improved by training,
digit tapping and sequence reconstruction is improved, etc.); but alas,
unlike the demonstrations of improvements in memory and attention,
clinicians and scientists who have conducted these studies have not yet
formally reported their results, much less published them in refereed
journals.
What can be striking *gains in dexterity are believed to be attributable to
generalized improvements in 'temporal processing' abilities.* Earlier
studies in my UCSF lab led by Drs. Beverly Wright and Dean Buonamano (now on
the faculties of Northwestern and UCLA, respectively) have shown (along with
other studies) that *temporal skills training generalizes from listening to
vision and somatosensation.
from positive plastic changes that are initially limited to the listening
cortex, but that with more extended training (several days) also induce
enabling plastic changes more broadly in the cortex, and in the basal
ganglia and cerebellum."
