Taken from the webpage of
Dr. Thomas Armstrong
The theory of multiple intelligences was developed in 1983 by Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University. It suggests that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, is far too limited. Instead, Dr. Gardner proposes eight different intelligences to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults. These intelligences are:
•Linguistic intelligence ("word smart")
•Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
•Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
•Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
•Musical intelligence ("music smart")
•Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
•Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
•Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")
Dr. Gardner says that our schools and culture focus most of their attention on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. We esteem the highly articulate or logical people of our culture. However, Dr. Gardner says that we should also place equal attention on individuals who show gifts in the other intelligences: the artists, architects, musicians, naturalists, designers, dancers, therapists, entrepreneurs, and others who enrich the world in which we live. Unfortunately, many children who have these gifts don’t receive much reinforcement for them in school. Many of these kids, in fact, end up being labeled "learning disabled," "ADD (attention deficit disorder," or simply underachievers, when their unique ways of thinking and learning aren’t addressed by a heavily linguistic or logical-mathematical classroom. The theory of multiple intelligences proposes a major transformation in the way our schools are run. It suggests that teachers be trained to present their lessons in a wide variety of ways using music, cooperative learning, art activities, role play, multimedia, field trips, inner reflection, and much more (see Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom). The good news is that the theory of multiple intelligences has grabbed the attention of many educators around the country, and hundreds of schools are currently using its philosophy to redesign the way it educates children. The bad news is that there are thousands of schools still out there that teach in the same old dull way, through dry lectures, and boring worksheets and textbooks. The challenge is to get this information out to many more teachers, school administrators, and others who work with children, so that each child has the opportunity to learn in ways harmonious with their unique minds (see In Their Own Way).
The theory of multiple intelligences also has strong implications for adult learning and development. Many adults find themselves in jobs that do not make optimal use of their most highly developed intelligences (for example, the highly bodily-kinesthetic individual who is stuck in a linguistic or logical desk-job when he or she would be much happier in a job where they could move around, such as a recreational leader, a forest ranger, or physical therapist). The theory of multiple intelligences gives adults a whole new way to look at their lives, examining potentials that they left behind in their childhood (such as a love for art or drama) but now have the opportunity to develop through courses, hobbies, or other programs of self-development (see 7 Kinds of Smart).
How to Teach or Learn Anything 8 Different Ways
One of the most remarkable features of the theory of multiple intelligences is how it provides eight different potential pathways to learning. If a teacher is having difficulty reaching a student in the more traditional linguistic or logical ways of instruction, the theory of multiple intelligences suggests several other ways in which the material might be presented to facilitate effective learning. Whether you are a kindergarten teacher, a graduate school instructor, or an adult learner seeking better ways of pursuing self-study on any subject of interest, the same basic guidelines apply. Whatever you are teaching or learning, see how you might connect it with
•words (linguistic intelligence)
•numbers or logic (logical-mathematical intelligence)
•pictures (spatial intelligence)
•music (musical intelligence)
•self-reflection (intrapersonal intelligence)
•a physical experience (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence)
•a social experience (interpersonal intelligence), and/or
•an experience in the natural world. (naturalist intelligence)
For example, if you’re teaching or learning about the law of supply and demand in economics, you might read about it (linguistic), study mathematical formulas that express it (logical-mathematical), examine a graphic chart that illustrates the principle (spatial), observe the law in the natural world (naturalist) or in the human world of commerce (interpersonal); examine the law in terms of your own body [e.g. when you supply your body with lots of food, the hunger demand goes down; when there's very little supply, your stomach's demand for food goes way up and you get hungry] (bodily-kinesthetic and intrapersonal); and/or write a song (or find an existing song) that demonstrates the law (perhaps Dylan's "Too Much of Nothing?").
You don’t have to teach or learn something in all eight ways, just see what the possibilities are, and then decide which particular pathways interest you the most, or seem to be the most effective teaching or learning tools. The theory of multiple intelligences is so intriguing because it expands our horizon of available teaching/learning tools beyond the conventional linguistic and logical methods used in most schools (e.g. lecture, textbooks, writing assignments, formulas, etc.). To get started, put the topic of whatever you’re interested in teaching or learning about in the center of a blank sheet of paper, and draw eight straight lines or "spokes" radiating out from this topic. Label each line with a different intelligence. Then start brainstorming ideas for teaching or learning that topic and write down ideas next to each intelligence (this is a spatial-linguistic approach of brainstorming; you might want to do this in other ways as well, using a tape-recorder, having a group brainstorming session, etc.). Have fun!
Showing posts with label Article: Other. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Article: Other. Show all posts
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Holiday Top Five Tips for Children With Special Needs
Plano, TX (PRWEB) October 25, 2010
Holidays are a busy time of year, full of activity from people to places that can easily over stimulate children, especially those with special needs. A survey by the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found 10.2 million U.S. children in the have special healthcare needs, or 14 percent of all U.S. children. More than one-fifth of U.S. households with children have at least one child with special needs. HOPELights holiday tips are designed to aid the families that love and support special needs children-having guidance on high-sensory events like the upcoming holidays are critical.
According to the Center for Disease Control, Autism Spectrum Disorder dials in at an average of 1 in 110 children, while Down Syndrome occurs 1 in every 800 births. See related data at: www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html and www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/bd/ds.htm. Many other children experience a variety of issues from Mental Retardation to Developmental Delays, Down Syndrome to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety to Fragile X, ADHD and so on.
Even typical needs children go into over-drive. For example, one study (Ahn, Miller, Milberger, McIntosh, 2004) shows that at least 1 in 20 children (with or without any other diagnosis) are affected by SPD, a term that refers to the way the nervous system receives messages from the senses and turns them into appropriate motor and behavioral responses.
"This means millions of children in the United States have some sort of challenge with things like loud noises, environmental or event transitions, crowds, sensitivities to taste or touch just to name a few," said Dawn Grosvenor, founder of HOPELight Media. "Which is why putting special emphasis on how to help children and their families through the holiday hustle and bustle is critical in ensuring they have a positive, healthy and loving interaction with friends and family. Holidays should be cherished and foster positive memories that last a lifetime."
HopeLights Holiday Top Five Tips for Children With Special Needs:
(1) Make a Visual Schedule - Many children are used to routine, structure and consistency, but much of this is lost during the holidays. If your child can see it coming for days, hours and minutes before it happens, transitions from place to place or even events in your own home will be more welcoming to your child.
(2) Identify "Anchor" or Transition Items - Most children have an attachment to a favorite blanket, stuffed animal, toy or other item. Make sure your child has his or her favorites nearby especially if you are traveling. Let them carry a special bag of their favorite goodies. It is a little piece of home and helps them feel grounded and secure.
(3) Establish Warm Up Times and Personal Space Parameters - Holidays bring in visitors or not-so-familiar faces that your child only sees once or twice a year. It is important these visitors give your child time to warm up and re-establish a connection. Great Aunt Betty may not be familiar right away, but she will be rewarded with a warm interaction 20 minutes or so into her visit if Aunt Betty and your child are prepared for the event.
(4) Create and Communicate Code Words - Special needs or not, every child hits a melting point. Too many people, too many presents, skipping or moving a nap time can lead to the uncomfortable fit. As a parent, we can sometimes see these coming or at the very least we can intervene at the beginning. Talk with your family members before everyone gets together and establish a "Code Word" and ask them to help when you say this word or phrase. It can be as simple as "Houston, we have a problem." By establishing code words with friends and relatives, this lets them know when you and your child need a private moment. You will be amazed how well they understand and cooperate without hurt feelings and it takes the pressure off of you.
(5) Set Your Own Expectations in Advance - As parents we sometimes expect too much of ourselves, and put even more expectations on the "perfect" holiday. Remember you are only one person with only one goal, to love your children and ensure they are safe and happy this holiday season. Create your own To-Do lists and schedule plenty of time between events and preparation of visitors so you are not rushing through the holiday, but savoring each moment.
In honor of this holiday season, for every new annual HOPELights Children's Activity Magazine subscription for children with special needs purchased in December 2010, a new subscription will be donated to a child in pediatric hospice for the coming 2011 calendar year. See related announcement at: http://tinyurl.com/25a2wgm.
HOPELights magazine is available in three subscription options starting as low as $6.70 an issue with an annual subscription. To order a subscription for your child or give to a child you know this holiday season, go to www.hopelightmedia.com.
About HopeLight Media
HOPELight Media, LLC was founded by Dawn Grosvenor, mother of a daughter who was diagnosed with autism. HOPELights serves the purpose of developing materials and activities for special needs children that motivate and educate through positive, holistic stimuli. The materials are well suited across the range of special needs and provides support to many levels of Autism, Down syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, MR, Spinal Bifida, Muscular Dystrophy and any child experiencing sensory or cognitive delays.
The HOPELights magazine is the first of its kind targeted specifically to support the sensory needs of "differently-abled" youth. The company strives to support the unique population of parents, families, and children with an uncompromising, sustained effort of inclusion and joy.
For more information, visit www.hopelightmedia.com or email hope@hopelightmedia.com
© 2010 HOPELights Media. All rights reserved.
Holidays are a busy time of year, full of activity from people to places that can easily over stimulate children, especially those with special needs. A survey by the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found 10.2 million U.S. children in the have special healthcare needs, or 14 percent of all U.S. children. More than one-fifth of U.S. households with children have at least one child with special needs. HOPELights holiday tips are designed to aid the families that love and support special needs children-having guidance on high-sensory events like the upcoming holidays are critical.
According to the Center for Disease Control, Autism Spectrum Disorder dials in at an average of 1 in 110 children, while Down Syndrome occurs 1 in every 800 births. See related data at: www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html and www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/bd/ds.htm. Many other children experience a variety of issues from Mental Retardation to Developmental Delays, Down Syndrome to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety to Fragile X, ADHD and so on.
Even typical needs children go into over-drive. For example, one study (Ahn, Miller, Milberger, McIntosh, 2004) shows that at least 1 in 20 children (with or without any other diagnosis) are affected by SPD, a term that refers to the way the nervous system receives messages from the senses and turns them into appropriate motor and behavioral responses.
"This means millions of children in the United States have some sort of challenge with things like loud noises, environmental or event transitions, crowds, sensitivities to taste or touch just to name a few," said Dawn Grosvenor, founder of HOPELight Media. "Which is why putting special emphasis on how to help children and their families through the holiday hustle and bustle is critical in ensuring they have a positive, healthy and loving interaction with friends and family. Holidays should be cherished and foster positive memories that last a lifetime."
HopeLights Holiday Top Five Tips for Children With Special Needs:
(1) Make a Visual Schedule - Many children are used to routine, structure and consistency, but much of this is lost during the holidays. If your child can see it coming for days, hours and minutes before it happens, transitions from place to place or even events in your own home will be more welcoming to your child.
(2) Identify "Anchor" or Transition Items - Most children have an attachment to a favorite blanket, stuffed animal, toy or other item. Make sure your child has his or her favorites nearby especially if you are traveling. Let them carry a special bag of their favorite goodies. It is a little piece of home and helps them feel grounded and secure.
(3) Establish Warm Up Times and Personal Space Parameters - Holidays bring in visitors or not-so-familiar faces that your child only sees once or twice a year. It is important these visitors give your child time to warm up and re-establish a connection. Great Aunt Betty may not be familiar right away, but she will be rewarded with a warm interaction 20 minutes or so into her visit if Aunt Betty and your child are prepared for the event.
(4) Create and Communicate Code Words - Special needs or not, every child hits a melting point. Too many people, too many presents, skipping or moving a nap time can lead to the uncomfortable fit. As a parent, we can sometimes see these coming or at the very least we can intervene at the beginning. Talk with your family members before everyone gets together and establish a "Code Word" and ask them to help when you say this word or phrase. It can be as simple as "Houston, we have a problem." By establishing code words with friends and relatives, this lets them know when you and your child need a private moment. You will be amazed how well they understand and cooperate without hurt feelings and it takes the pressure off of you.
(5) Set Your Own Expectations in Advance - As parents we sometimes expect too much of ourselves, and put even more expectations on the "perfect" holiday. Remember you are only one person with only one goal, to love your children and ensure they are safe and happy this holiday season. Create your own To-Do lists and schedule plenty of time between events and preparation of visitors so you are not rushing through the holiday, but savoring each moment.
In honor of this holiday season, for every new annual HOPELights Children's Activity Magazine subscription for children with special needs purchased in December 2010, a new subscription will be donated to a child in pediatric hospice for the coming 2011 calendar year. See related announcement at: http://tinyurl.com/25a2wgm.
HOPELights magazine is available in three subscription options starting as low as $6.70 an issue with an annual subscription. To order a subscription for your child or give to a child you know this holiday season, go to www.hopelightmedia.com.
About HopeLight Media
HOPELight Media, LLC was founded by Dawn Grosvenor, mother of a daughter who was diagnosed with autism. HOPELights serves the purpose of developing materials and activities for special needs children that motivate and educate through positive, holistic stimuli. The materials are well suited across the range of special needs and provides support to many levels of Autism, Down syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, MR, Spinal Bifida, Muscular Dystrophy and any child experiencing sensory or cognitive delays.
The HOPELights magazine is the first of its kind targeted specifically to support the sensory needs of "differently-abled" youth. The company strives to support the unique population of parents, families, and children with an uncompromising, sustained effort of inclusion and joy.
For more information, visit www.hopelightmedia.com or email hope@hopelightmedia.com
© 2010 HOPELights Media. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Can Down Syndrome Be Treated?
Dana Foundation
By Jim Schnabel
July 22, 2010
Down syndrome (DS) causes such a complex set of abnormalities in the developing nervous system that the resulting mental disabilities of people with DS have been considered untreatable. But researchers have created strains of mice that mimic DS’s genetic abnormalities, and have begun to show that existing drugs can successfully treat specific kinds of cognitive deficit in these mice. A study published on June 30 in the Journal of Neuroscience, for example, indicates that Prozac (fluoxetine), delivered to these mice shortly after birth, reverses a key brain abnormality and enables the mice to perform a standard memory test as well as normal mice.
“Based on all our data we think that fluoxetine is a good candidate for clinical trials,” says Renata Bartesaghi of the University of Bologna, senior author of the study.
“I think the field is wide open now and really ripe for major discoveries,” says Alberto Costa of the University of Colorado–Denver Medical School, whose lab has shown similar results for the cognitive-boosting drug memantine, and is now conducting a clinical trial of the drug in young people with DS.
Restoring neurogenesis
In humans, DS typically begins with a mistake in the formation of an egg cell that leaves it—and any embryo resulting from the fertilization of that egg—with an extra copy of chromosome 21. A segment of the mouse chromosome 16 is very similar to human chromosome 21, so mice engineered to have an extra copy of this segment—known as Ts65Dn mice—are considered a potentially useful model of the human disease, despite the obviously incomplete similarity between mice and humans.
In Ts65Dn mice as well as in humans with DS, researchers previously have noted a relative lack of neurogenesis, or production of new neurons, which is crucial for normal brain development. Some antidepressant drugs such as fluoxetine are known to promote neurogenesis, so Bartesaghi and her colleagues dosed their Ts65Dn mice with fluoexetine from day 3 to day 15 after birth, and then compared them to a group of untreated Ts65Dn mice.
The treated mice seemed vastly improved. They showed normal or even higher-than-normal levels of neurogenesis at day 15 and day 45, whereas untreated Ts65Dn mice showed much lower than normal levels. The treated Ts65Dn mice also regained a normal number of cells in a part of a crucial memory region, the hippocampus, where neurogenesis is particularly intense and persists into adulthood in humans. In a test of the memory of a specific place—a memory strongly dependent on the hippocampus—the treated Ts65Dn mice also performed as well as genetically normal mice. By contrast, the untreated Ts65Dn mice scored poorly on all measures.
The study appears to confirm and extend a study published in 2006 by a group of researchers including Costa, who found similar improvements in neurogenesis for fluoxetine-treated Ts65Dn mice—but adult mice, not newborns. “It’s always nice to see some of your own findings being replicated,” says Costa. “And on top of that they did experiments we hadn’t done.”
Costa abandoned fluoxetine as a candidate because despite their recovery of neurogenesis, his treated Ts65Dn mice failed to show improvement on a key memory test then commonly used – a variant of what is known as the Morris water maze. The behavioral improvements in newborn Ts65Dn mice reported by Bartesaghi’s group make him more optimistic about the drug, however. “I find their results interesting and impressive,” he says. “I definitely would include fluoxetine as a candidate for clinical trials in the future.”
The Bartesaghi group emphasizes treatment at the start of life, not in adulthood, in order to correct abnormalities in brain development at the earliest possible stage. But early treatment poses a special challenge in humans: Neurogenesis in most parts of the brain, including the cortex, which mediates higher, distinctively “human” functions, is largely completed during the fetal stage of life.
Bartesaghi says that her group therefore has begun treatment on Ts65Dn mice when they are still in the womb, to see if the growth of the cortex, which is much reduced in people with DS, can be somewhat restored. “From our preliminary data it appears that prenatal treatment is extremely effective and does not have aversive effects on the pups,” she says.
High hopes and caveats
In 2008, Costa’s group reported that memantine, a drug currently approved for treating symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, restored the performance of grown Ts65Dn mice on a memory test similar to the one used by Bartesaghi’s group. Memantine has the effect of moderately reducing the activity of NMDA receptors on brain cells – activity that appears to be abnormally high in Ts65Dn mice. But Costa doesn’t yet know precisely how memantine’s effects on NMDA receptors translates into cognitive improvements in the mice. Memantine does appear to be a relatively safe drug, however, and Costa recently was able to begin enrolling 40 adolescents and young adults with DS in an initial 16-week clinical trial, which he expects to conclude late this year or early in 2011. More than 400,000 people in the United States have DS, according to the National Down Syndrome Society.
Even though his DS subjects are nearly full-grown, Costa hopes that the study will show some hints of cognitive improvement. But he doesn’t expect a miracle. “Nothing’s going to happen in the four months of our trial that will change daily living skills for those individuals,” he says. “Those take a long time even in a normally developing person.” Much larger and longer trials would be necessary to prove memantine’s efficacy in any case, Costa adds.
Frances Wiseman, a DS researcher at University College, London, also cautions that, so far, these mouse tests have been done with relatively narrow measures of cognitive performance. In the case of fluoxetine, she says, “it would be sensible to repeat the treatment with a wider range of behavioral tests, and perhaps in another mouse model of Down syndrome, before embarking on a clinical trial.”
Both she and Costa note that although fluoxetine is now routinely prescribed for children as an antidepressant, an apparently above-normal incidence of suicidal ideation in young users has made its use in this age group somewhat controversial. Wiseman points out too that in at least one case reported in the early 1990s, fluoxetine was associated with seizures in a patient with DS.
Lithium, another mood-stabilizing drug that has the effect of promoting neurogenesis, is also being tested in adults with DS in a clinical trial at King’s College, London. Bartesaghi and her colleagues reported earlier this year on a successful test of lithium in Ts65Dn mice. But Bartesaghi doesn’t think lithium is a good candidate for use in children or infants with DS, because it is considered too toxic in that age group; in her lab, newborn Ts65Dn mice given the drug had a high mortality rate.
“One has to be aware of all the caveats,” says Costa. “But on the whole I’m now very optimistic about the prospects for treating Down syndrome, otherwise I wouldn’t have started a clinical trial. The field has long been neglected, but it’s now definitely getting interesting.”
By Jim Schnabel
July 22, 2010
Down syndrome (DS) causes such a complex set of abnormalities in the developing nervous system that the resulting mental disabilities of people with DS have been considered untreatable. But researchers have created strains of mice that mimic DS’s genetic abnormalities, and have begun to show that existing drugs can successfully treat specific kinds of cognitive deficit in these mice. A study published on June 30 in the Journal of Neuroscience, for example, indicates that Prozac (fluoxetine), delivered to these mice shortly after birth, reverses a key brain abnormality and enables the mice to perform a standard memory test as well as normal mice.
“Based on all our data we think that fluoxetine is a good candidate for clinical trials,” says Renata Bartesaghi of the University of Bologna, senior author of the study.
“I think the field is wide open now and really ripe for major discoveries,” says Alberto Costa of the University of Colorado–Denver Medical School, whose lab has shown similar results for the cognitive-boosting drug memantine, and is now conducting a clinical trial of the drug in young people with DS.
Restoring neurogenesis
In humans, DS typically begins with a mistake in the formation of an egg cell that leaves it—and any embryo resulting from the fertilization of that egg—with an extra copy of chromosome 21. A segment of the mouse chromosome 16 is very similar to human chromosome 21, so mice engineered to have an extra copy of this segment—known as Ts65Dn mice—are considered a potentially useful model of the human disease, despite the obviously incomplete similarity between mice and humans.
In Ts65Dn mice as well as in humans with DS, researchers previously have noted a relative lack of neurogenesis, or production of new neurons, which is crucial for normal brain development. Some antidepressant drugs such as fluoxetine are known to promote neurogenesis, so Bartesaghi and her colleagues dosed their Ts65Dn mice with fluoexetine from day 3 to day 15 after birth, and then compared them to a group of untreated Ts65Dn mice.
The treated mice seemed vastly improved. They showed normal or even higher-than-normal levels of neurogenesis at day 15 and day 45, whereas untreated Ts65Dn mice showed much lower than normal levels. The treated Ts65Dn mice also regained a normal number of cells in a part of a crucial memory region, the hippocampus, where neurogenesis is particularly intense and persists into adulthood in humans. In a test of the memory of a specific place—a memory strongly dependent on the hippocampus—the treated Ts65Dn mice also performed as well as genetically normal mice. By contrast, the untreated Ts65Dn mice scored poorly on all measures.
The study appears to confirm and extend a study published in 2006 by a group of researchers including Costa, who found similar improvements in neurogenesis for fluoxetine-treated Ts65Dn mice—but adult mice, not newborns. “It’s always nice to see some of your own findings being replicated,” says Costa. “And on top of that they did experiments we hadn’t done.”
Costa abandoned fluoxetine as a candidate because despite their recovery of neurogenesis, his treated Ts65Dn mice failed to show improvement on a key memory test then commonly used – a variant of what is known as the Morris water maze. The behavioral improvements in newborn Ts65Dn mice reported by Bartesaghi’s group make him more optimistic about the drug, however. “I find their results interesting and impressive,” he says. “I definitely would include fluoxetine as a candidate for clinical trials in the future.”
The Bartesaghi group emphasizes treatment at the start of life, not in adulthood, in order to correct abnormalities in brain development at the earliest possible stage. But early treatment poses a special challenge in humans: Neurogenesis in most parts of the brain, including the cortex, which mediates higher, distinctively “human” functions, is largely completed during the fetal stage of life.
Bartesaghi says that her group therefore has begun treatment on Ts65Dn mice when they are still in the womb, to see if the growth of the cortex, which is much reduced in people with DS, can be somewhat restored. “From our preliminary data it appears that prenatal treatment is extremely effective and does not have aversive effects on the pups,” she says.
High hopes and caveats
In 2008, Costa’s group reported that memantine, a drug currently approved for treating symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, restored the performance of grown Ts65Dn mice on a memory test similar to the one used by Bartesaghi’s group. Memantine has the effect of moderately reducing the activity of NMDA receptors on brain cells – activity that appears to be abnormally high in Ts65Dn mice. But Costa doesn’t yet know precisely how memantine’s effects on NMDA receptors translates into cognitive improvements in the mice. Memantine does appear to be a relatively safe drug, however, and Costa recently was able to begin enrolling 40 adolescents and young adults with DS in an initial 16-week clinical trial, which he expects to conclude late this year or early in 2011. More than 400,000 people in the United States have DS, according to the National Down Syndrome Society.
Even though his DS subjects are nearly full-grown, Costa hopes that the study will show some hints of cognitive improvement. But he doesn’t expect a miracle. “Nothing’s going to happen in the four months of our trial that will change daily living skills for those individuals,” he says. “Those take a long time even in a normally developing person.” Much larger and longer trials would be necessary to prove memantine’s efficacy in any case, Costa adds.
Frances Wiseman, a DS researcher at University College, London, also cautions that, so far, these mouse tests have been done with relatively narrow measures of cognitive performance. In the case of fluoxetine, she says, “it would be sensible to repeat the treatment with a wider range of behavioral tests, and perhaps in another mouse model of Down syndrome, before embarking on a clinical trial.”
Both she and Costa note that although fluoxetine is now routinely prescribed for children as an antidepressant, an apparently above-normal incidence of suicidal ideation in young users has made its use in this age group somewhat controversial. Wiseman points out too that in at least one case reported in the early 1990s, fluoxetine was associated with seizures in a patient with DS.
Lithium, another mood-stabilizing drug that has the effect of promoting neurogenesis, is also being tested in adults with DS in a clinical trial at King’s College, London. Bartesaghi and her colleagues reported earlier this year on a successful test of lithium in Ts65Dn mice. But Bartesaghi doesn’t think lithium is a good candidate for use in children or infants with DS, because it is considered too toxic in that age group; in her lab, newborn Ts65Dn mice given the drug had a high mortality rate.
“One has to be aware of all the caveats,” says Costa. “But on the whole I’m now very optimistic about the prospects for treating Down syndrome, otherwise I wouldn’t have started a clinical trial. The field has long been neglected, but it’s now definitely getting interesting.”
Friday, October 15, 2010
WHAT IS ABR?
Please visit the site: http://www.blyum.com
ABR stands for Advanced BioMechanical Rehabilitation.
ABR is a unique biomechanically based rehabilitation approach for children and young adults with brain injury that brings predictable recovery of musculoskeletal structure and motor functions.
ABR is the method of structural correction of musculoskeletal deformities. It is a hands-on method performed by the parents who learn the ABR technique and receive individual prescription of applications from the ABR professional staff.
• ABR is a method that re-builds even the most severely distorted musculoskeletal structure
• ABR redefines "rehabilitation" – ABR improves musculoskeletal structure so significantly that normal motor functions recover spontaneously, making special training and management for "motor disabled" unnecessary.
We use no pharmaceuticals, no electrical instruments and no surgeries - ABR is a hands-on method of manual applications to the child's body, based purely on biomechanical principles.
ABR biomechanical reconstruction of the musculoskeletal system follows the path of normal motor development - starting from the neck and trunk and later descending to the periphery (arms and legs).
ABR provides planned progress of the musculoskeletal structure and function through predictable stages. Results are predicted in numbers of hours of exercises done and changes in the alignment, mobility, size, tone and strength of the child's body – specifically in the chest, abdomen and the pelvis.
ABR is more than just a new rehabilitation method; ABR is a comprehensive philosophy of the child's recovery. The cornerstones of the ABR philosophy are fundamental biomechanical principles of the human body's growth and development. Respectively ABR takes bio-electrical and bio-chemical factors into account only through their biomechanical manifestations.
This biomechanical approach allows us to have exact guidance for every single movement. Every single ABR application to a child's body is precisely calculated and adjusted for each individual patient.
ABR opens a new dimension in the treatment of the mildest to the most severe motor dysfunctions in the sense that it gradually brings changes to the mechanical and electrical structure of the muscles, thus allowing spontaneous developments of motor function.
ABR emphasises 3 essential concepts in describing the functional role of smooth muscles or internal myofascia with respect to the body's biomechanical structure:
• Hydraulic (or hydraulic/pneumatic) skeleton. This concept highlights the structural roll of the smooth muscles - in comparison to the classical definition of the «hard», bony skeleton as being that which carries the sole responsibility for the body's structure. Smooth muscles and other structures of internal myofascia are the membranes that maintain the shape of the body, with an effect similar to the whitish-coloured membranes within a grapefruit. These tissues envelop and ensheath the major bodily cavities (cranial, thoracic, abdominal etc.), enwrap each of the bodies individual organs (lungs, liver, stomach etc.) and sustain the smallest compartments within each of the bodies system. It is the hydraulic quality of the smooth muscles that administers inner strength and form. The term 'hydraulic skeleton' is used most frequently by ABR for convenience.
* A normal "hydraulic skeleton" provides normal alignment of the bony skeleton and normality of skeletal muscles - allowing normal motor function.
* Am abnormal, weakened "hydraulic skeleton" results in the collapse of the musculoskeletal system and impossibility of motor function.
• Visceral skeleton (visceral core) is the name used for the observation and discovery that the structures comprising the hydraulic skeleton serve as the body's core and define the mechanical foundation of the internal organs for the body's structure.
• Hydraulic/pneumatic capacity characterizes the "strength" and volume of the hydraulic/ pneumatic skeleton and the quality of «hydraulic support» that it gives to the musculoskeletal system.
The term pneumatic capacity summarizes several main characteristics:
• The level of pressure necessary for the development of sufficient internal volumes.
• The size of internal volumes.
• The level of strength of the myofascial membranes that is necessary to achieve the normal internal pressure/volume ratio. This is in turn required to sustain the challenges of gravity and of the external atmospheric pressure.
The objective of ABR is to restore proper tone to the smooth muscles/internal myofascia, which in a cascade effect restores proportions and alignment of the skeleton. During this process, the muscle tone is normalized and the arms and legs develop increasing muscle mass, normal range of mobility, and finally: sufficient strength - so that the children can develop their movements in normal spontaneous ways. All other approaches address the skeletal muscles directly. Nevertheless, such a direct approach proves to give limited results. ABR sees the direct approaches as the ones addressing the "tip of the iceberg". The underwater part is the smooth muscles.
What are the smooth muscles?
The smooth muscles are the ones that make up the internal organs, such as the liver, lungs, kidneys, intestines, etc.
Why address the smooth muscles?
ABR considers the smooth muscles as the "primary victims" of the brain injury. As their tone significantly drops, following brain injury, the secondary victims are the structures of musculoskeletal system, which distort as a result causing cerebral palsy as the disorder of posture and movement.
The total surface of the lining of internal organs is enormous in comparison to their respective volumes. For example the total active surface of the lungs is about 900 sq. feet (80 sq.m.) in relation to a volume that is approximately 3 litres. This huge surface is necessary for efficient metabolism. On the other hand, it seals the internal hydraulic volume that composes the walls that hold the shape of the bodily cavities.
ABR recognizes the importance of the strength of this lining made of smooth muscles (internal myofascia) for the proper development of a human body and, particularly of the musculoskeletal system, which is supported by this internal "hydraulic skeleton".
ABR considers the smooth muscles to be the primary victims of a brain injury. As their tone drops following a brain injury, the secondary victims are the structure of the musculo-skeletal system, which in turn collapses - changing the normal alignment of muscles and bones and shifting the distances between points of muscular attachments. Such shift of attachments in turn causes the skeletal muscles imbalance: i.e. spasticity and contractures. Finally, such muscular imbalance makes normal movements impossible. The resulting pathological diagnosis is cerebral palsy, as a disorder of posture and muscle control.
This is why ABR proposes a unique technique to administer kinetic input directly to smooth muscles.
ABR is the first and the only approach that recognizes the fundamental role of smooth muscles in the development of the musculoskeletal system.
Unfortunately, in traditional medicinal practice the internal organs are looked upon only from the viewpoint of chemical metabolism, while, on the other hand, the biomechanical approach does not normally focus on anything other than the classical skeleton comprised of «muscles and bones».
Strengthening of the smooth muscles induces gradual growth of internal pneumatic capacity, which in a cascade effect restores:
• volume, shape and strength of the neck and trunk,
• normal alignment of the joints of the limbs, eliminating spasticity and contractures,
• normal volume and then strength of weakened skeletal muscles,
• normal alignment of the shoulder girdle and arms as well as pelvis and legs - allowing normal "insertion" of arms and legs and thus making proper movements possible.
Moreover, restoration of muscular skeletal structure re-establishes normal metabolism (flow of blood and oxygen supply) of 'defective', atrophied muscles and, in addition, normal electrical ascending activity to the brain, opening wide the "back door" to function.
ABR targets the core structures of human body: the smooth muscles of internal organs. To be precise we target the entire complex of internal myofascia (mucosa, smooth muscles, serosa etc. and their sublevels).
• that are directly related to the quality of the general metabolism - regulating proper breathing, swallowing, digestion, evacuation, etc. and being responsible for the general health of a child.
• that we call the hydraulic skeleton of the human body - providing essential "hydraulic support" to the superficial structures of a "classically" defined musculoskeletal system (muscles, ligaments, bones etc.). ABR states that this "hydraulic skeleton" defines the proportions and the alignment of the bony skeleton and the quality of the skeletal muscles.
Normalization of the musculoskeletal system must come first.
• Nervous activity flowing from the muscular skeletal system «ascending» to the brain plays a vital role in the development of normal signals emanating from the central nervous system «descending» to the musculoskeletal system.
• When the musculoskeletal structure is profoundly distorted, any training is narrowed down to quite a limited scope: "trying to put poor structure to some better functional use".
• Without normalization of the musculoskeletal structure, any functional progress of a brain-injured person would always remain significantly limited and largely unpredictable.
Bio-electrical plasticity of the brain
ABR shows evidence that irreversibility of initial structural brain damage does not make motor function recovery intrinsically hopeless. The brain damage is not a critical obstacle for successful biomechanical reconstruction, as long as the musculoskeletal system is addressed in an effective biomechanical manner. There is no critical need to «repair» the brain before initiating the restoration of the biomechanical system.
The brain damage is not a critical obstacle for successful bio-mechanical reconstruction as long as the musculoskeletal system is addressed in a bio-mechanical proper way. There is no critical need to "repair" the brain first.
ABR approach makes restoring the mechanical structure of the musculoskeletal system its first and primary goal. Why? We support the following concept:
Mechanical transformation of the musculoskeletal elements (muscles, joints, etc.) by ABR automatically changes the parameters of their electrical charge. This respectively, changes the electrical activity of these elements (for instance, the skeletal muscles) and then translates into a transformation of the ascending signals sent to the brain, which in turn creates an adequate base for forthcoming descending signals to the muscles.
ABR states that even an injured brain still has enough reserves to rearrange its electrical connections in order to integrate biomechanical structural improvements of the musculoskeletal system, provided that the structural improvements are significant enough.
ABR in a nutshell
Everyone believes that a CP child has poor functions because his/her brain is too damaged to be able to control normal movements. Respectively CP children are considered incurable because the brain damage is irreversible.
ABR has a different philosophy. We believe that even the badly injured brain has enough electrical plasticity to allow control of normal motor functions, however, for this plasticity to become activated, a child's musculoskeletal structure has to be improved to a sufficient level - to the so-called plasticity threshold.
Existing treatment methods fail to achieve recovery of motor functions. This failure is then blamed on the brain damage.
We believe that the answer lies differently. Existing treatment methods fail, not because of insufficient «reserves» of the damaged brain, but because they fail to provide sufficient structural improvements to the musculoskeletal system. As a result, the injured brain has "too little of a good musculoskeletal structure to work with" and cannot utilize its remaining plasticity (reserves) for control of motor functions.
Musculoskeletal structure reconstruction must come first!
ABR approach makes restoring the mechanical structure of the musculoskeletal system its first and primary goal.
• full range of movements (ex.? the head being able to move unrestrictedly in all directions)
• proper alignment (ex.: legs in respect to the pelvis; arms in respect to the shoulders, etc.)
• muscular mechanical response (proper muscular balance)
In turn, «quality of mechanical performance» requires «bio-mechanical capacity» of the musculoskeletal system, which implies:
• Proper volume, tone and strength of the skeletal muscles
• Proper volume, mobility and alignment of the joints
• Equilibrium of strength and length between reciprocal muscular groups (ex: biceps, triceps)
• Adequate proportions between size and strength of centre (head, neck, trunk) and periphery (arms and legs)
• Cascade of muscular interactions (centre to periphery)
ABR re-establishes - unit-by-unit - proper skeletal and muscular structure to permit proper unrestricted performance of movement.
ABR stands for Advanced BioMechanical Rehabilitation.
ABR is a unique biomechanically based rehabilitation approach for children and young adults with brain injury that brings predictable recovery of musculoskeletal structure and motor functions.
ABR is the method of structural correction of musculoskeletal deformities. It is a hands-on method performed by the parents who learn the ABR technique and receive individual prescription of applications from the ABR professional staff.
• ABR is a method that re-builds even the most severely distorted musculoskeletal structure
• ABR redefines "rehabilitation" – ABR improves musculoskeletal structure so significantly that normal motor functions recover spontaneously, making special training and management for "motor disabled" unnecessary.
We use no pharmaceuticals, no electrical instruments and no surgeries - ABR is a hands-on method of manual applications to the child's body, based purely on biomechanical principles.
ABR biomechanical reconstruction of the musculoskeletal system follows the path of normal motor development - starting from the neck and trunk and later descending to the periphery (arms and legs).
ABR provides planned progress of the musculoskeletal structure and function through predictable stages. Results are predicted in numbers of hours of exercises done and changes in the alignment, mobility, size, tone and strength of the child's body – specifically in the chest, abdomen and the pelvis.
ABR is more than just a new rehabilitation method; ABR is a comprehensive philosophy of the child's recovery. The cornerstones of the ABR philosophy are fundamental biomechanical principles of the human body's growth and development. Respectively ABR takes bio-electrical and bio-chemical factors into account only through their biomechanical manifestations.
This biomechanical approach allows us to have exact guidance for every single movement. Every single ABR application to a child's body is precisely calculated and adjusted for each individual patient.
ABR opens a new dimension in the treatment of the mildest to the most severe motor dysfunctions in the sense that it gradually brings changes to the mechanical and electrical structure of the muscles, thus allowing spontaneous developments of motor function.
ABR emphasises 3 essential concepts in describing the functional role of smooth muscles or internal myofascia with respect to the body's biomechanical structure:
• Hydraulic (or hydraulic/pneumatic) skeleton. This concept highlights the structural roll of the smooth muscles - in comparison to the classical definition of the «hard», bony skeleton as being that which carries the sole responsibility for the body's structure. Smooth muscles and other structures of internal myofascia are the membranes that maintain the shape of the body, with an effect similar to the whitish-coloured membranes within a grapefruit. These tissues envelop and ensheath the major bodily cavities (cranial, thoracic, abdominal etc.), enwrap each of the bodies individual organs (lungs, liver, stomach etc.) and sustain the smallest compartments within each of the bodies system. It is the hydraulic quality of the smooth muscles that administers inner strength and form. The term 'hydraulic skeleton' is used most frequently by ABR for convenience.
* A normal "hydraulic skeleton" provides normal alignment of the bony skeleton and normality of skeletal muscles - allowing normal motor function.
* Am abnormal, weakened "hydraulic skeleton" results in the collapse of the musculoskeletal system and impossibility of motor function.
• Visceral skeleton (visceral core) is the name used for the observation and discovery that the structures comprising the hydraulic skeleton serve as the body's core and define the mechanical foundation of the internal organs for the body's structure.
• Hydraulic/pneumatic capacity characterizes the "strength" and volume of the hydraulic/ pneumatic skeleton and the quality of «hydraulic support» that it gives to the musculoskeletal system.
The term pneumatic capacity summarizes several main characteristics:
• The level of pressure necessary for the development of sufficient internal volumes.
• The size of internal volumes.
• The level of strength of the myofascial membranes that is necessary to achieve the normal internal pressure/volume ratio. This is in turn required to sustain the challenges of gravity and of the external atmospheric pressure.
The objective of ABR is to restore proper tone to the smooth muscles/internal myofascia, which in a cascade effect restores proportions and alignment of the skeleton. During this process, the muscle tone is normalized and the arms and legs develop increasing muscle mass, normal range of mobility, and finally: sufficient strength - so that the children can develop their movements in normal spontaneous ways. All other approaches address the skeletal muscles directly. Nevertheless, such a direct approach proves to give limited results. ABR sees the direct approaches as the ones addressing the "tip of the iceberg". The underwater part is the smooth muscles.
What are the smooth muscles?
The smooth muscles are the ones that make up the internal organs, such as the liver, lungs, kidneys, intestines, etc.
Why address the smooth muscles?
ABR considers the smooth muscles as the "primary victims" of the brain injury. As their tone significantly drops, following brain injury, the secondary victims are the structures of musculoskeletal system, which distort as a result causing cerebral palsy as the disorder of posture and movement.
The total surface of the lining of internal organs is enormous in comparison to their respective volumes. For example the total active surface of the lungs is about 900 sq. feet (80 sq.m.) in relation to a volume that is approximately 3 litres. This huge surface is necessary for efficient metabolism. On the other hand, it seals the internal hydraulic volume that composes the walls that hold the shape of the bodily cavities.
ABR recognizes the importance of the strength of this lining made of smooth muscles (internal myofascia) for the proper development of a human body and, particularly of the musculoskeletal system, which is supported by this internal "hydraulic skeleton".
ABR considers the smooth muscles to be the primary victims of a brain injury. As their tone drops following a brain injury, the secondary victims are the structure of the musculo-skeletal system, which in turn collapses - changing the normal alignment of muscles and bones and shifting the distances between points of muscular attachments. Such shift of attachments in turn causes the skeletal muscles imbalance: i.e. spasticity and contractures. Finally, such muscular imbalance makes normal movements impossible. The resulting pathological diagnosis is cerebral palsy, as a disorder of posture and muscle control.
This is why ABR proposes a unique technique to administer kinetic input directly to smooth muscles.
ABR is the first and the only approach that recognizes the fundamental role of smooth muscles in the development of the musculoskeletal system.
Unfortunately, in traditional medicinal practice the internal organs are looked upon only from the viewpoint of chemical metabolism, while, on the other hand, the biomechanical approach does not normally focus on anything other than the classical skeleton comprised of «muscles and bones».
Strengthening of the smooth muscles induces gradual growth of internal pneumatic capacity, which in a cascade effect restores:
• volume, shape and strength of the neck and trunk,
• normal alignment of the joints of the limbs, eliminating spasticity and contractures,
• normal volume and then strength of weakened skeletal muscles,
• normal alignment of the shoulder girdle and arms as well as pelvis and legs - allowing normal "insertion" of arms and legs and thus making proper movements possible.
Moreover, restoration of muscular skeletal structure re-establishes normal metabolism (flow of blood and oxygen supply) of 'defective', atrophied muscles and, in addition, normal electrical ascending activity to the brain, opening wide the "back door" to function.
ABR targets the core structures of human body: the smooth muscles of internal organs. To be precise we target the entire complex of internal myofascia (mucosa, smooth muscles, serosa etc. and their sublevels).
• that are directly related to the quality of the general metabolism - regulating proper breathing, swallowing, digestion, evacuation, etc. and being responsible for the general health of a child.
• that we call the hydraulic skeleton of the human body - providing essential "hydraulic support" to the superficial structures of a "classically" defined musculoskeletal system (muscles, ligaments, bones etc.). ABR states that this "hydraulic skeleton" defines the proportions and the alignment of the bony skeleton and the quality of the skeletal muscles.
Normalization of the musculoskeletal system must come first.
• Nervous activity flowing from the muscular skeletal system «ascending» to the brain plays a vital role in the development of normal signals emanating from the central nervous system «descending» to the musculoskeletal system.
• When the musculoskeletal structure is profoundly distorted, any training is narrowed down to quite a limited scope: "trying to put poor structure to some better functional use".
• Without normalization of the musculoskeletal structure, any functional progress of a brain-injured person would always remain significantly limited and largely unpredictable.
Bio-electrical plasticity of the brain
ABR shows evidence that irreversibility of initial structural brain damage does not make motor function recovery intrinsically hopeless. The brain damage is not a critical obstacle for successful biomechanical reconstruction, as long as the musculoskeletal system is addressed in an effective biomechanical manner. There is no critical need to «repair» the brain before initiating the restoration of the biomechanical system.
The brain damage is not a critical obstacle for successful bio-mechanical reconstruction as long as the musculoskeletal system is addressed in a bio-mechanical proper way. There is no critical need to "repair" the brain first.
ABR approach makes restoring the mechanical structure of the musculoskeletal system its first and primary goal. Why? We support the following concept:
Mechanical transformation of the musculoskeletal elements (muscles, joints, etc.) by ABR automatically changes the parameters of their electrical charge. This respectively, changes the electrical activity of these elements (for instance, the skeletal muscles) and then translates into a transformation of the ascending signals sent to the brain, which in turn creates an adequate base for forthcoming descending signals to the muscles.
ABR states that even an injured brain still has enough reserves to rearrange its electrical connections in order to integrate biomechanical structural improvements of the musculoskeletal system, provided that the structural improvements are significant enough.
ABR in a nutshell
Everyone believes that a CP child has poor functions because his/her brain is too damaged to be able to control normal movements. Respectively CP children are considered incurable because the brain damage is irreversible.
ABR has a different philosophy. We believe that even the badly injured brain has enough electrical plasticity to allow control of normal motor functions, however, for this plasticity to become activated, a child's musculoskeletal structure has to be improved to a sufficient level - to the so-called plasticity threshold.
Existing treatment methods fail to achieve recovery of motor functions. This failure is then blamed on the brain damage.
We believe that the answer lies differently. Existing treatment methods fail, not because of insufficient «reserves» of the damaged brain, but because they fail to provide sufficient structural improvements to the musculoskeletal system. As a result, the injured brain has "too little of a good musculoskeletal structure to work with" and cannot utilize its remaining plasticity (reserves) for control of motor functions.
Musculoskeletal structure reconstruction must come first!
ABR approach makes restoring the mechanical structure of the musculoskeletal system its first and primary goal.
• full range of movements (ex.? the head being able to move unrestrictedly in all directions)
• proper alignment (ex.: legs in respect to the pelvis; arms in respect to the shoulders, etc.)
• muscular mechanical response (proper muscular balance)
In turn, «quality of mechanical performance» requires «bio-mechanical capacity» of the musculoskeletal system, which implies:
• Proper volume, tone and strength of the skeletal muscles
• Proper volume, mobility and alignment of the joints
• Equilibrium of strength and length between reciprocal muscular groups (ex: biceps, triceps)
• Adequate proportions between size and strength of centre (head, neck, trunk) and periphery (arms and legs)
• Cascade of muscular interactions (centre to periphery)
ABR re-establishes - unit-by-unit - proper skeletal and muscular structure to permit proper unrestricted performance of movement.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Melodies Can Help Heal Disharmonies in Speech
by David Cameron
A lesion on the elderly man’s left frontal lobe, damage from a massive stroke, has robbed him of the ability to speak. The clinician sitting opposite him asks him to repeat a simple phrase: “Happy birthday to you.” The man struggles, but only manages, “En oh en oh en oh.”
The clinician then asks him to sing the phrase. Holding his left hand, moving it rhythmically, she initiates the song. After a few attempts, she’s silent, and he sings it as clearly as anyone carrying a cake with lit candles. The clinician then asks him, again, to speak the phrase. Without a hitch, he repeats, “Happy birthday to you.”
In less than two minutes, an extraordinary feat has occurred. Yet for researchers like Gottfried Schlaug, HMS associate professor of neurology and director of the Music, Neuroimaging and Stroke Recovery Laboratories at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), such events aren’t new. Medical literature going back a century describes stroke victims who have regained aspects of speech through melodic intonation therapy. “The difference,” Schlaug says, “is that now we have the neuroimaging tools to investigate what occurs in the brains of people who relearn language through song.”
These tools reveal substantial overlap between areas of the brain that process music and language. Damage to the left hemisphere significantly impairs speech. And although the right hemisphere has some capacity for language, it responds best to clearly structured information, such as melodies. Layering language over melodies engages the right hemisphere’s latent language capacity.
Schlaug speculates that when people cycle between singing and speaking, the melodic contour and continuous voicing enable the right hemisphere to vocalize words and phrases, creating a kind of language-smuggling Trojan horse. By moving the elderly man’s left hand, the clinician helps him connect sounds to actions, sketching auditory motor maps into the right side. If a patient rehearses this entire process long enough, the brain’s right side eventually compensates for the impaired left—and even changes structure. “Ultimately,” Schlaug says, “we trick the right hemisphere into learning how to speak.”
Neurologists once embraced the theory that the right hemisphere of the brain housed a person’s creativity, while the left hemisphere processed information such as math. Musicians, then, should be highly right brain lateralized. In the early 1990s, Schlaug tested that theory. Using MRI technology to scan the brains of both musicians and nonmusicians, he and his colleagues discovered that the brains’ morphologies revealed the opposite. Musicians, on average, were more left brained; those with perfect pitch were the most left brained of all.
Schlaug has since focused on the planum temporale, which is part of the auditory cortex. The planum temporale has a more pronounced leftward asymmetry in musicians with perfect pitch than in musicians without perfect pitch and in nonmusicians.
“Professional musicians practice their skills many hours a day, for many years,” says Schlaug. “We think of musicians as auditory-motor athletes whose long-term training has an effect on brain function and structure.”
These findings launched Schlaug onto a trajectory of collaborations with researchers such as Psyche Loui, an HMS instructor in neurology at BIDMC and a violinist with perfect pitch, and David Alsop, a musician who is also an HMS associate professor of radiology at BIDMC.
As Schlaug, Loui, Alsop, and colleagues use the latest imaging technologies to study the brains of musicians and nonmusicians, the unanswered questions mount. How, for example, does music affect brain adaptation, reorganization, and even plasticity? The team is also in the last phases of a longitudinal study on the neurobiological effects on children of learning to play an instrument.
And finally, what about professional musicians? Schlaug suspects they are not born with the natural advantage of an auditory-motor system that enables them to play a musical instrument. Instead, given the plasticity of the brain, particularly at a young age, their continued musical practice likely leads to brain changes that can be detected by modern imaging techniques. For many of us this is good news. “Unless you’re tone-deaf,” Loui says, “you probably have some unconscious musical abilities even if you can’t sing in tune.”
A lesion on the elderly man’s left frontal lobe, damage from a massive stroke, has robbed him of the ability to speak. The clinician sitting opposite him asks him to repeat a simple phrase: “Happy birthday to you.” The man struggles, but only manages, “En oh en oh en oh.”
The clinician then asks him to sing the phrase. Holding his left hand, moving it rhythmically, she initiates the song. After a few attempts, she’s silent, and he sings it as clearly as anyone carrying a cake with lit candles. The clinician then asks him, again, to speak the phrase. Without a hitch, he repeats, “Happy birthday to you.”
In less than two minutes, an extraordinary feat has occurred. Yet for researchers like Gottfried Schlaug, HMS associate professor of neurology and director of the Music, Neuroimaging and Stroke Recovery Laboratories at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), such events aren’t new. Medical literature going back a century describes stroke victims who have regained aspects of speech through melodic intonation therapy. “The difference,” Schlaug says, “is that now we have the neuroimaging tools to investigate what occurs in the brains of people who relearn language through song.”
These tools reveal substantial overlap between areas of the brain that process music and language. Damage to the left hemisphere significantly impairs speech. And although the right hemisphere has some capacity for language, it responds best to clearly structured information, such as melodies. Layering language over melodies engages the right hemisphere’s latent language capacity.
Schlaug speculates that when people cycle between singing and speaking, the melodic contour and continuous voicing enable the right hemisphere to vocalize words and phrases, creating a kind of language-smuggling Trojan horse. By moving the elderly man’s left hand, the clinician helps him connect sounds to actions, sketching auditory motor maps into the right side. If a patient rehearses this entire process long enough, the brain’s right side eventually compensates for the impaired left—and even changes structure. “Ultimately,” Schlaug says, “we trick the right hemisphere into learning how to speak.”
Neurologists once embraced the theory that the right hemisphere of the brain housed a person’s creativity, while the left hemisphere processed information such as math. Musicians, then, should be highly right brain lateralized. In the early 1990s, Schlaug tested that theory. Using MRI technology to scan the brains of both musicians and nonmusicians, he and his colleagues discovered that the brains’ morphologies revealed the opposite. Musicians, on average, were more left brained; those with perfect pitch were the most left brained of all.
Schlaug has since focused on the planum temporale, which is part of the auditory cortex. The planum temporale has a more pronounced leftward asymmetry in musicians with perfect pitch than in musicians without perfect pitch and in nonmusicians.
“Professional musicians practice their skills many hours a day, for many years,” says Schlaug. “We think of musicians as auditory-motor athletes whose long-term training has an effect on brain function and structure.”
These findings launched Schlaug onto a trajectory of collaborations with researchers such as Psyche Loui, an HMS instructor in neurology at BIDMC and a violinist with perfect pitch, and David Alsop, a musician who is also an HMS associate professor of radiology at BIDMC.
As Schlaug, Loui, Alsop, and colleagues use the latest imaging technologies to study the brains of musicians and nonmusicians, the unanswered questions mount. How, for example, does music affect brain adaptation, reorganization, and even plasticity? The team is also in the last phases of a longitudinal study on the neurobiological effects on children of learning to play an instrument.
And finally, what about professional musicians? Schlaug suspects they are not born with the natural advantage of an auditory-motor system that enables them to play a musical instrument. Instead, given the plasticity of the brain, particularly at a young age, their continued musical practice likely leads to brain changes that can be detected by modern imaging techniques. For many of us this is good news. “Unless you’re tone-deaf,” Loui says, “you probably have some unconscious musical abilities even if you can’t sing in tune.”
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