Dyslexia and the Brain: Education

There is ample confirmation in the literature that brain function and structure can be altered. In 1979, in an article in the Journal of Learning Disabilities, Doctors Marianne Frostig and Phyllis Maslow stated, “Neuropsychological research has demonstrated that environmental conditions, including education, affect brain structure and functioning.” In their book Brain, Mind, and Behavior Floyd E. Bloom, a neuropharmacologist, and Arlyne Lazerson, a professional writer specializing in psychology, state, “Experience [learning] can cause physical modifications in the brain.” This is confirmed by Michael Merzenich of the University of San Francisco. His work on brain plasticity shows that, while areas of the brain are designated for specific purposes, brain cells and cortical maps do change in response to experience (learning). It seems that, while learning causes brain growth on the one hand, the lack of learning, on the other hand, causes a lack of brain growth.

A good example of brain growth, caused by learning, can be found in Glenn Doman's research on severely brain-damaged children. At the beginning of the twentieth century brain-damaged children were still regarded as “monsters,” and the “disgrace” that this brought on parents had to be hidden at all cost. Only towards the 1930s and early 1940s did research in this field begin to make the public aware of the needs of these children. Glenn Doman of Philadelphia was one of the pioneers in this field. Thanks to the work of Doman and his colleagues, the quality of life of many severely brain-damaged children has improved — some quite drastically.

Apparently Doman later broadened his audience to include learning-disabled children of normal intelligence. In the mid-1960s, he and Carl Delacato opened several treatment centers to which parents flocked with their children. However, apparently their technique did not achieve sufficient results in remediating the supposedly “minimal” brain damaged, and as a result they fell into disfavor among LD practitioners: “The extravagant and rather bizarre claims made for this technique prompted a number of researchers to study it more closely, and they concluded that the program was worthless,” stated Carrier in Learning Disability: Dissenting Essays. Moreover, a number of professional and parents' associations took the unusual step of publicly denouncing the Doman and Delacato method.

Doman's failures seemingly caused researchers to reject his work altogether. This is unfortunate, because his successes — his work with severely brain-damaged children — certainly throws important light on brain development.

The heads of truly brain-damaged children usually grow at a slower rate than those of normal children. In one research analysis done by Doman, on 278 case histories of consecutively admitted brain-damaged children, 82.2 percent were below normal in head size at the start of treatment. All but thirty-seven of the children moved to an above-average rate of growth in head size over the fourteen-month period covered by the survey. In fact, the average rate of growth during treatment was 254 percent — between two to three times faster — of the normal for that age. As a result of the therapy, the brain started growing.

An example of a lack of learning, causing a lack of brain growth, can be found in the work of Doctors Bruce D. Perry and Ronnie Pollard, two researchers at Baylor College of Medicine. They found that children raised in severely isolated conditions, where they had minimal exposure to language, touch and social interactions, developed brains 20 to 30 percent smaller than normal for their age.