A few years ago, Jordan Heald marched into the office of A Touch of Understanding and said she wanted to be a speaker for the organization.

The Granite Bay nonprofit’s Executive Director Leslie DeDora asked what she would speak about.

“I’ll never forget what she said,” DeDora said. “She said she has dyslexia and her younger sister does too, and she doesn’t want her to be teased the way she was. who can say no to that?”

Jordan joined the group’s Youth FORCE, which stands for Friends Offering Respect creating Empowerment, and visits schools to spread awareness about disabilities.

Now a freshman at Granite Bay High School, Jordan, 14, isn’t able to volunteer as much as she once did. But she still wants kids to know that it’s wrong to make fun of someone else because of a learning disability.

“I was made to feel bad inside because I wasn’t like them,” Jordan said. “But now I feel so confident. I don’t care what other people think.”

October marks National Dyslexia Awareness Month. one out of every 10 Americans struggles with dyslexia, according to the International Dyslexia Association.

Dyslexia is considered an “invisible disability,” unlike blindness or an amputation. When A Touch of Understanding gives class presentations, they teach students about visible and invisible disabilities at the same time.

They want to show how a dyslexic person can’t just easily read a book any more than a paralyzed person can just hop out of a wheelchair and walk around.

“it is not a matter of will,” DeDora said.

Dyslexia is a brain-based learning disability that impairs a person’s ability to read, write, spell and sometimes speak, according to the National Institutes of Health. A person with dyslexia has trouble translating messages received from the eyes or ears into understandable language.

Cases can range from mild to severe and include three types: trauma dyslexia when there is injury to the brain, primary dyslexia when there is a dysfunction of the left side of the brain and developmental dyslexia, which typically diminishes as the child matures.

Symptoms include difficulties with word recognition, mixing up similar words and poor spelling and decoding abilities.

Dyslexic people don’t read backwards, although spelling can look jumbled because they have trouble remembering letter symbols for sounds and forming memories for words.

A Touch of Understanding volunteers demonstrate dyslexia at a “frustration station” — where people attempt to write letters and trace around shapes by looking at a mirror and not at the paper. It’s not easy.

“we give students an idea of what it might be like to have that challenge,” DeDora said. “But you’re just as intelligent as before you sat down at the mirror.”

Dyslexia occurs in people of all intellectual levels. People with dyslexia may be gifted in areas that don’t require strong language skills, such as art, computer science, design, drama, electronics, math, music and sports.

A list of prominent dyslexic people includes John Lennon, Ansel Adams, Jay Leno, Erin Brockovich, Nobel Peace Prize winners, politicians and astrophysicists. Jordan was diagnosed with dyslexia when she was in third grade.

“My first reaction was, ‘Let’s get her fixed,’” said her mom, Lavena Heald.

Her daughter was bullied and didn’t have any friends as a child. DeDora said some kids with dyslexia may feel misunderstood or ostracized. some might overcompensate by becoming the class clown, or sit silently in the back of the classroom.

“They are thought to be less intelligent and that’s more of a burden to bear than the disability itself,” DeDora said.

Jordan was carted off to tutoring. She tried homeschooling, then a charter school and then back to a public school — Cavitt Junior High School, where she made the group of friends she still has today.

Through the years, she experienced much frustration. it was hard figuring out words. She took a long time reading directions on school assignments. She reads at a lower grade level than her peers.

Dyslexia runs in families and Jordan’s younger sister, Marissa, 10, also has the disability. Their dad Steve does, too.

And instead of trying to “fix” Jordan, her parents decided to encourage the areas where she shines.

“Let’s work on everything she’s really good at,” Lavena Heald said. “it just changed her … to over-the-top confidence.”

Jordan is a talented musician. She writes her own country music and performs cover songs at gigs around town. She plays the guitar, which she learned visually by watching her teacher. She’s also practicing the piano.

“She can’t read music,” Lavena Heald said. “But she can jam on the guitar.”

Sena Christian can be reached at . Follow her on Twitter at SenaC_RsvPT.———-Problems experienced by dyslexics:

• Learning to speak• Learning letters and their sounds• Organizing written and spoken language• Memorizing number facts• Reading quickly enough to comprehend• Persisting with and comprehending longer reading assignments• Spelling• Learning a foreign language• Correctly doing math operationsSource: International Dyslexia Association———-For more information on A Touch of Understanding’s Youth FORCE (Friends Offering Respect creating Empowerment), visit touchofunderstanding.org or call (916) 791-4146.

Dyslexia is a condition that is known far and the children with this disorder is diagnosed as soon as possible. but in adults, there are cases of dyslexia are not yet aware of it and not know they can seek help for his condition. Knowing the symptoms of adult dyslexia help you recognize if you are suffering from learning disabilities.

Dyslexia is a learning disability and people who were born at the time that dyslexia is not yet a known condition. These people suffer from this problem increased learning and labeled as stupid or slow does not learn to know what we have is a mess and no treatments now to help them cope with their difficulties. It would be helpful if you know the symptoms of dyslexia in adults to know the help you need.

The loss of confidence and low self-esteem are some of the negative results of experiencing failures due to this learning problem. they can not understand why, because they know they have dyslexia. the symptoms of adult dyslexia involve reading, writing and spelling disability. the problems of spoken language processing and everything that relates to the sequence numbers and are also included. here are some of the symptoms of dyslexia so they know what they are enduring.

“the difficulty reading and spelling

“the suffering of the problems of understanding

-Difficult to manage time and keep organized

-Difficulty making or follow the instructions

-Difficult to deal with the sequence, numbers, counting forward and backward or mathematical operations.

-Difficult to distinguish directions or distinguish left from right

- Confused with dates and time resulting in missed appointments.

Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities in children and in many adults, which hinders a person’s reading, writing, spelling and speaking ability. Many people with dyslexia often suffered from difficulties with reading and spelling properly. in recent research shows that dyslexia is not an intellectual disability, it is considered both a learning disability and a reading disability. Dyslexia and IQ are not interrelated too, for reading and cognition develop independently in individuals who have dyslexia.  although there is a learning problem, many sufferers can still become successful in life.

Because everyone is born differently, not all dyslexics displays the same symptoms, the severity of dyslexia can vary from mild to severe. some may be mildly dyslexic and may only have a few or even none of the symptoms, some have severe symptoms which affect a person’s life. as far as treatment concerned, the sooner dyslexia is treated, the more favorable the outcome, it is never too late for people with dyslexia to learn to improve their language skills.

Nowadays dyslexia can be considerably tackled with proper therapy, training and equipment, dyslexic people will benefit from modern technology products. there are many tools and resources to combat dyslexia or learning disabilities, help people cope with their disabilities and difficulties.

Audio devices such as tape recorders are helpful, users can listen to what they have recorded repeatedly. Similarly, users can take advantage of text to speech programs, besides reading out text, some of these kind software programs such as Panopreter Plus have additional advanced features. Panopreter Plus reads characters, words, phrases or files in file format of txt, rtf, doc, pdf and web pages with natural voices, and converts them to wave and mp3 audio files, the volume and rate are also adjustable. By using the text to speech software, user can hear a natural voice speech on the computer, or export audio files to an iPod, smart phone or portable mp3 player, and listen to them whenever they like to do so.

Voice-enabled electronic dictionaries which give word definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and pronunciation are also helpful. If spelling and grammar are the major problems, there are spelling and grammar devices that have spell-checkers to correct your spelling, and grammar checkers for your grammar correction.

Besides utilizing above technology resources to get help with dyslexia, many other treatments and exercises that can be done to speed up the treatment and help process. With the proper training and treatment, dyslexics can overcome their dyslexia symptoms and lead normal and productive lives.

Claud Matllon – About the Author:

Posted on: Friday, 24 December 2010, 07:56 CST

(Ivanhoe Newswire) – by using sophisticated brain imaging, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers are able to predict with 90 percent accuracy which teenagers with dyslexia could improve their reading skills over time.

This is the first study to identify specific brain mechanisms involved in a person’s ability to overcome reading difficulties. It has potential to lead to new interventions to help dyslexics better learn to read."This gives us hope that we can identify which children might get better over time," Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, an imaging expert and instructor at Stanford’s Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research, was quoted as saying. "More study is needed before the technique is clinically useful, but this is a huge step forward."

Dyslexia affects 5-17 percent of U.S. children, and is a brain-based learning disability that impairs a person’s ability to read. Affected children’s ability to improve their reading skills varies immensely, with about one-fifth able to benefit from treatment and develop adequate reading skills by adulthood. Up to this point, what happens in the brain that allows for improvement is unknown.

Previous imaging studies have shown greater activation of the inferior frontal gyrus (part of frontal lobe) in children and adults. Experts hypothesize that greater involvement of this part of the brain during reading is related to long-term gains in reading for dyslexic children.For this study, Dr. Hoeft and colleagues aimed to determine whether neuroimaging could predict reading improvement and how brain-based measures compared with conventional educational measures.

The researchers gathered 25 children with dyslexia and 20 children with typical reading skills — all around age 14 — and assessed their reading with standardized tests. they then used two types of imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging (a specialized form of MRI), as the children performed reading tasks. Two-and-a-half years later, they reassessed reading performance and asked which brain image or standardized reading measures taken at baseline predicted how much the child’s reading skills would improve over time.

What the researchers found was that no behavioral measure, including widely used standardized reading and language tests, reliably predicted reading gains. but children with dyslexia who at baseline showed greater activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus during a specific task and whose white matter connected to this right frontal region was better organized showed greater reading improvement over the next two-and-a-half years. the researchers also found that looking at patterns of activation across the whole brain allowed them to very accurately predict future reading gains in the children with dyslexia. "the reason this is exciting is that until now, there have been no known measures that predicted who will learn to compensate," said Dr. Hoeft.

The other exciting implication, Hoeft said, involves therapy. the research shows that gains in reading for dyslexic children involve different neural mechanisms and pathways than those for typically developing children. by understanding this, researchers could develop interventions that focus on the appropriate regions of the brain and that are, in turn, more effective at improving a child’s reading skills.

Hoeft said this work might also encourage the use of imaging to enhance the understanding (and potentially the treatment) of other disorders. "in general terms, these findings suggest that brain imaging may play a valuable role in neuroprognosis, the use of brain measures to predict future reductions or exacerbations of symptoms in clinical disorders," Dr. Hoeft explained.

SOURCE: the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online December 23, 2010

Source: Ivanhoe Newswire

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Public release date: 20-Dec-2010 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Michelle Brandtmbrandt@stanford.edu650-723-0272Stanford University Medical Center

STANFORD, Calif. ? Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have used sophisticated brain imaging to predict with 90 percent accuracy which teenagers with dyslexia would improve their reading skills over time.

Their work, the first to identify specific brain mechanisms involved in a person’s ability to overcome reading difficulties, could lead to new interventions to help dyslexics better learn to read.

“This gives us hope that we can identify which children might get better over time,” said Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, an imaging expert and instructor at Stanford’s Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research. “More study is needed before the technique is clinically useful, but this is a huge step forward.”

Hoeft is first author of a paper, which will be published online Dec. 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The senior author is John Gabrieli, PhD, a former Stanford professor now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dyslexia, a brain-based learning disability that impairs a person’s ability to read, affects 5 to 17 percent of U.S. children. Affected children’s ability to improve their reading skills varies greatly, with about one-fifth able to benefit from interventions and develop adequate reading skills by adulthood. but up to this point, what happens in this brain to allow for this improvement remained unknown.

Past imaging studies have shown greater activation of specific brain regions in children and adults with dyslexia during reading-related tasks; one area in particular, the inferior frontal gyrus (which is part of the frontal lobe), is used more in dyslexics than in typical readers. As the researchers noted in their paper, some experts have hypothesized that greater involvement of this part of the brain during reading is related to long-term gains in reading for dyslexic children.

For this study, Hoeft and colleagues aimed to determine whether neuroimaging could predict reading improvement and how brain-based measures compared with conventional educational measures.

The researchers gathered 25 children with dyslexia and 20 children with typical reading skills ? all around age 14 ? and assessed their reading with standardized tests. they then used two types of imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging (a specialized form of MRI), as the children performed reading tasks. Two-and-a-half years later, they reassessed reading performance and asked which brain image or standardized reading measures taken at baseline predicted how much the child’s reading skills would improve over time.

What the researchers found was that no behavioral measure, including widely used standardized reading and language tests, reliably predicted reading gains. but children with dyslexia who at baseline showed greater activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus during a specific task and whose white matter connected to this right frontal region was better organized showed greater reading improvement over the next two-and-a-half years. The researchers also found that looking at patterns of activation across the whole brain allowed them to very accurately predict future reading gains in the children with dyslexia.

“The reason this is exciting is that until now, there have been no known measures that predicted who will learn to compensate,” said Hoeft.

As the researchers noted in their paper, “fMRI is typically viewed as a research tool that has little practical implication for an individual with dyslexia.” Yet these findings suggest that, after additional study, brain imaging could be used as a prognostic tool to predict reading improvement in dyslexic children.

The other exciting implication, Hoeft said, involves therapy. The research shows that gains in reading for dyslexic children involve different neural mechanisms and pathways than those for typically developing children. By understanding this, researchers could develop interventions that focus on the appropriate regions of the brain and that are, in turn, more effective at improving a child’s reading skills.

Hoeft said this work might also encourage the use of imaging to enhance the understanding (and potentially the treatment) of other disorders. “In general terms, these findings suggest that brain imaging may play a valuable role in neuroprognosis, the use of brain measures to predict future reductions or exacerbations of symptoms in clinical disorders,” she explained.

The authors noted several caveats with their findings. The children were followed for two-and-a-half years; longer-term outcomes are unknown. The study also involved children in their teens; more study is needed to determine whether brain-based measures can predict reading progress in younger children. Hoeft is now working on a study of pre-readers, being funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Hoeft and Gabrieli collaborated on the study with researchers from Vanderbilt University, University of York in England and University of Jyv?skyl? in Finland. Stanford co-authors include Gary Glover, PhD, professor of radiology, and Allan Reiss, MD, the Howard C. Robbins Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and professor of radiology and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research.

###

The study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Stanford University Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Child Health Research Program, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

Information about Stanford’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which also supported the study, is available at psychiatry.stanford.edu/.

The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation’s top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. for more news about the school, please visit mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. for information about all three, please visit stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.

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It is price noting that having dyslexia in no way points to a lack of intelligence. it is a learning disability and is also not attributable to neglecting or other exterior influences.

Voice-enabled digital dictionaries which give word definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and pronunciation are also helpful. If spelling and grammar are the key problems, there are spelling and grammar devices that have spell-checkers to correct your spelling, and grammar checkers for your grammar correction.

Major dyslexia is a kind of dyslexia that is used to explain a dysfunction of the left facet of the brain order acai berries. People who have this sort of dyslexia will wrestle with reading, spelling, and writing, in numerous levels, through adulthood. Primary dyslexia has been determined to be hereditary. This condition appears to be more prevalent in boys.

A study recently commissioned by the British Broadcasting Company 2 for its series The Mind of a Millionaire found that self-made millionaires are four instances more likely than the rest of the population to be dyslexic. The study, done by a team of psychologists and business experts, spent a day putting the themes by means of a battery of tests acai berry boom. of the 5,000 British millionaires chosen for the study, a significant majority reported struggling in school. of the 300 millionaires studied more closely, about forty% of them were recognized with dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a neurological condition that manifests itself as a learning disability. This disability varies extensively but is generally characterized by difficulties in spelling, sounding out and recognizing words.

Dyslexia impacts youngsters in various ways. some children solely have a light case of it, while others can be severely affected. This is why a homeschool curriculum for dyslexia is a better option in serving to your baby study, fairly than having your child go to a traditional school acai berry fruit juice. You’ll be able to customize the curriculum based mostly on your child’s degree of learning and based on what she or he needs to learn.