Author: Kathryn Hulick / Source: Science News for Students
A kindergarten teacher stood in front of her classroom, holding an attendance sheet.
It held the same names she’d read each day all year long. But today something was different. The letters on the sheet looked like strange symbols. She couldn’t make sense of them. She tried to read her lesson plans. No luck. The teacher began to panic. She called the principal and left work early.At the hospital a few days later, a doctor explained that she’d had a stroke. This is where a blood vessel in the brain either bursts or becomes blocked. Both problems starve brain cells. This can injure or even kill someone. Many stroke survivors lose their ability to speak or to move certain parts of the body.
In this teacher’s case, however, the stroke affected only a part of her brain that makes sense of written words. Although she could no longer read, the woman could still speak and write normally. Doctors refer to this strange and rare condition as pure alexia (Ah-LEX-ee-uh), or “word blinclearfixdness.”
The woman’s doctor, José Biller, is a neurologist, or doctor who specializes in the brain. He works at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill. Three years after her stroke, the teacher still sees him. “She is an extraordinary person,” he says.
As a doctor, Biller has seen how brain injuries can affect someone’s ability to read. And he’s helped these patients learn how to cope. But some people with perfectly healthy brains also have trouble reading. This condition is called dyslexia (Dis-LEX-ee-uh).
Some scientists and researchers have devoted their careers to figuring out how the brain responds to words. They’ve peered at the brain activity of people as they read. And they’ve tracked kids’ progress in reading over many years. Their work could help teachers and doctors better understand how to help struggling readers.
Word blindness
Biller sees patients who struggle every day with basic tasks. “I meet people in need and try my best to help them overcome problems,” he says. He has been drawn to help people from a young age. When he was just nine years old, he lost both of his parents. His mother passed away after a stroke. This may have led to his interest in the brain, he says.
When he first met the kindergarten teacher, he realized her case was special. Stroke victims regularly struggle with language. But most who lose the ability to read also have trouble understanding speech. Others can’t read or write. Word blindness, in contrast, affects only reading.
The injury in this teacher’s brain disconnected all visual information from the part of her brain that identifies words. This brain region still contains the name and sound of each letter. But the shapes she sees with her eyes never make it there.
The teacher has found clever ways to get around her reading problem. “I have always been really impressed about her resilience,” Biller says. For instance, the teacher can trace the letters of the alphabet one by one over the letter on the page. When she finds a shape that matches, she knows what the letter is. She can very slowly read a word this way, letter by letter.
Also, she recognizes some words without reading them. When she saw the word “dessert,” she responded, “I like that!” and when she saw “asparagus” she said, “something’s upsetting me about this word.” She couldn’t read the words, but emotions linked to those words still surfaced.
The teacher’s brain injury can’t be repaired. But she is lucky that she survived it. Strokes occur most commonly in older adults. But all of us should work to keep our brains healthy. “Try to remain active and intellectually challenged,” says Biller. Reading, he says, is a great way to exercise your brain.
An island of weakness in a sea of strengths
For some people, reading has never been easy. A person with dyslexia may be a skilled doctor, scientist or lawyer. But that person’s intellect can’t help him or her read. For someone suffering from dyslexia, reading is “an island of weakness surrounded by a sea of strengths,” says Sally Shaywitz. She and her husband, Bennett Shaywitz, founded the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity in New Haven, Conn. They have spent decades studying dyslexia and working to help people affected by it.
One of those people is actor Orlando Bloom. Another is Max Brooks, author of the popular zombie novel World War Z. Sally Shaywitz has met both of them. Brooks “is happy to let people know he has dyslexia,” she says. “The disorder is nothing to be ashamed about.”
Dyslexia is surprisingly common. To study it, the Shaywitzes have been following a group…
The post Cool Jobs: Decoding how your brain ‘reads’ appeared first on FeedBox.