First Evidence of Brain Rewiring in Children: Reading Remediation Positively Alters Brain Tissue

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091209121200.htm


Scientists are discovering that is is very possible to rewire a childs brain in order to help with reading skills. "Showing that it's possible to rewire a brain's white matter has important implications for treating reading disabilities and other developmental disorders, including autism," said Just, the D.O. Hebb Professor of Psychology and director of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging (CCBI). the rewiring is caused naturally by the brain. after intense instruction, brain scans show that the brain actually ends up rewiring itself.
Keller and Just's study was designed to discover what physically changes in the brains of poor readers who make the transition to good reading. They scanned the brains of 72 children before and after they went through a six-month remedial instruction program. They seperated the children in to a control group and an experimental group. They broke it down as such; out of the 72 children, 47 were poor readers and 25 were reading at a normal level. The good readers and a group of 12 poor readers did not receive the remedial instruction, and their brain scans did not show any changes. "The lack of change in the control groups demonstrates that the change in the treated group cannot be attributed to naturally occurring maturation during the study," Keller said.
This is a phenomenal breakthrough in brain studies. Now that scientists and researchers know that they can alter and improve the cognitive performance of achilds brain, they are gaining a better advantage in understanding problems.