People with central auditory processing disorder are unable to locate where sounds are coming from and often have a warping effect when they hear something, unable to exactly pinpoint where it is coming from. this sort of disorder is quite common and one of the more recognised causes of many developmental disorders and dyslexia is one of them. Psychologists who are assessing a child may mistake central auditory processing disorder for something like attention deficit disorder – and this is because they share some symptoms and there could be a misdiagnosis. those afflicted by this will have plenty of trouble to process any sort of information that is verbal in nature and this could lead them to learning difficulties as they would find it very difficult to understand the person speaking to them.

The auditory dyslexic may hear letter or words as jumbled, and may be unable to repeat something that they just heard moments ago. Most people associate dyslexia with reading difficulties. this type of dyslexia is no different, because they cannot hear words as most people hear them, associating written words with sounds that are jumbled makes reading and writingmuch more difficult. Dysphonetic is another word used to describe someone who has auditory processing issues. As the word describes, individuals with this diagnosis have problems with phonetics.

People with auditory neuropathy may get natural hearing, or hearing departure ranging from balmy to serious, they ever have impoverished speech-perception abilities, meaning they have problem agreement address understandably. some patients with auditory neuropathy appear, based on history and initial behavioral testing, to fit into the category of “central auditory processing disorder”. however, evaluation of such patients with physiological measures sensitive to auditory nerve disorders shows a more peripheral site consistent with auditory neuropathy. Sometimes people with auditory neuropathy are subsequently diagnosed with diseases such as charcot marie tooth disease and friedreich’s ataxia. In these cases, auditory neuropathy may be a symptom of the more global effects these diseases rather than an isolated neuropathy of the ear-brain connection.

To ensure that the brain is effective in processing information, it is important that it has the capability to hold specific pieces of data and information and view it as a whole. it must do this by arranging the information into a particular order.

Auditory dyslexia, also known as dysphonetic dyslexia, is a disorder that affects a person’s ability to distinguish individual letter sounds within words. usually there is nothing wrong with the person’s hearing, but the brain is unable to correctly process the sounds it receives. While visual dyslexics can have trouble identifying written letters, auditory dyslexics have the same kind of problems hearing letter sounds.

Upon hearing the term “auditory processing deficit” most people think of someone who does not hear something well. They mistakenly are thinking about the person’s hearing acuity. Auditory processing is what the brain does with sound impulses once these impulses leave the ear. For some, the complicated chain of events in auditory processing presents barriers and is overlooked. this can result in false or inaccurate diagnoses. Sometimes a diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is not ADD at all, but is a deficit in attention secondary to an auditory processing deficit. In other words, the auditory processing deficit causes the individual to look like he/she is not paying attention. why, you ask? Imagine you are in a bad cell phone area.

You may go through most of your life without needing an audiologist, but if you discover you’re having problems with your hearing, seeing an audiologist can change your life dramatically for the better. many people assume that if they should be seeing an audiologist, their doctor will suggest it and set up a referral.

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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I'm sure I have something but I don't know anything about learning difficulties and would like to know if anyone can help me.I have some dyslexic symptoms like I have to read every word of everything very slowly and sometimes have to read have to read a sentence twice because I can't understand. I have a complete inability to scan read too. I have a large vocabulary and good writing skills so my bad reading difficulties are not just because of lack of knowledge but I don't think I'm dyslexic.
Also, I am very bad at reading clocks – I mean very bad – but again its something I should be able to do.the last thing is that I will write words with the letters in the wrong order sometimes which I know is a symptom of dyslexia but I don't seem to have all the common symptoms so I don't know if I am.

I'd just like anyones thoughts, help or it would be great to hear from a dyslexic person if they could tell me anything because my incapabilities can cause problems with my day to day life.

You could be Dyspraxic:
Gross motor co-ordination skills (large movements):

Poor balance. Difficulty in riding a bicycle, going up and down hills
Poor posture and fatigue. Difficulty in standing for a long time as a result of weak muscle tone. Floppy, unstable round the joints. some people with dyspraxia may have flat feet
Poor integration of the two sides of the body. Difficulty with some sports involving jumping and cycling
Poor hand-eye co-ordination. Difficulty with team sports especially those which involve catching a ball and batting. Difficulties with driving a car
Lack of rhythm when dancing, doing aerobics
Clumsy gait and movement. Difficulty changing direction, stopping and starting actions
Exaggerated 'accessory movements' such as flapping arms when running
Tendency to fall, trip, bump into things and people
Fine motor co-ordination skills (small movements):

Lack of manual dexterity. Poor at two-handed tasks, causing problems with using cutlery, cleaning, cooking, ironing, craft work, playing musical instruments
Poor manipulative skills. Difficulty with typing, handwriting and drawing. may have a poor pen grip, press too hard when writing and have difficulty when writing along a line
Inadequate grasp. Difficulty using tools and domestic implements, locks and keys
Difficulty with dressing and grooming activities, such as putting on makeup, shaving, doing hair, fastening clothes and tying shoelaces
Poorly established hand dominance:

May use either hand for different tasks at different times
Speech and language:

May talk continuously and repeat themselves. some people with dyspraxia have difficulty with organising the content and sequence of their language
May have unclear speech and be unable to pronounce some words
Speech may have uncontrolled pitch, volume and rate
Eye movements:

Tracking. Difficulty in following a moving object smoothly with eyes without moving head excessively. Tendency to lose the place while reading
Poor relocating. Cannot look quickly and effectively from one object to another (for example, looking from a TV to a magazine)
Perception (interpretation of the different senses):

Poor visual perception
Over-sensitive to light
Difficulty in distinguishing sounds from background noise. Tendency to be over-sensitive to noise
Over- or under-sensitive to touch. Can result in dislike of being touched and/or aversion to over-loose or tight clothing – tactile defensiveness
Over- or under-sensitive to smell and taste, temperature and pain
Lack of awareness of body position in space and spatial relationships. Can result in bumping into and tripping over things and people, dropping and spilling things
Little sense of time, speed, distance or weight. Leading to difficulties driving, cooking
Inadequate sense of direction. Difficulty distinguishing right from left means map reading skills are poor
Learning, thought and memory:

Difficulty in planning and organising thought
Poor memory, especially short-term memory. may forget and lose things
Unfocused and erratic. Can be messy and cluttered
Poor sequencing causes problems with maths, reading and spelling and writing reports at work
Accuracy problems. Difficulty with copying sounds, writing, movements, proofreading
Difficulty in following instructions, especially more than one at a time
Difficulty with concentration. may be easily distracted
May do only one thing at a time properly, though may try to do many things at once
Slow to finish a task. may daydream and wander about aimlessly
Emotion and behaviour:

Difficulty in listening to people, especially in large groups. Can be tactless, interrupt frequently. Problems with team work
Difficulty in picking up non-verbal signals or in judging tone or pitch of voice in themselves and or others. Tendency to take things literally. may listen but not understand
Slow to adapt to new or unpredictable situations. sometimes avoids them altogether
Impulsive. Tendency to be easily frustrated, wanting immediate gratification
Tendency to be erratic ñ have 'good and bad days'
Tendency to opt out of things that are too difficult
Emotions as a result of difficulties experienced:

Tend to get stressed, depressed and anxious easily
May have difficulty sleeping
Prone to low self-esteem, emotional outbursts, phobias, fears, obsessions, compulsions and addictive behaviour