Sunday, November 14, 2010

Neuroscience on Learning

In this weeks lesson we were learning connections of the brain and learning.  I was fascinated with ideas of storing and retrieval of information.  I wanted to look on new studies on brain activity, so I looked for Neuroscience ideas.

An Oxford university scientist, Dr Cohen Kadosh, believes that a small electrical current to the brain can make you better at learning math.  The electrical current has to pass through the parietal lobe of the brain from a certain direction.  His study shows if the current flows from right to left, the individuals did well in math, but if the current flow was left to right, then the individuals were significantly poor in math.  Also for individual who didn’t have any current flow, did not perform as well as the individual that had current flow from right to left, and did better than the individual that had current flow from left to right.  This new discovery can help people with Dyscalculia, referred as math dyslexia.


As I was browsing through the Society for Neuroscience website, I happen to come across a section of Dyslexia about the Brain Research Success Stories.  On the section of Dyslexia, I found it interesting that scientist have found gene markers for dyslexia on several chromosomes.   Scientist has also found that people with dyslexia have a glitch in their neurological wiring that makes them extremely difficult for them to read.  There has been one study that has shown immune proteins in the brain maybe causing the wiring to go wrong.  New studies are trying to figure out if the role of hormones in neurotransmitters affects reading.  Knowing genetic and possible biochemical causes of dyslexia will help experts more accurately treat and diagnose individuals.  Scientists are also looking on the affects of early intervention, to see if it will allow rewiring to occur.
Click on Dyslexia section.

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