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Press
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Fall 2009 -- Vector magazine
Making brain research child's play
Imagine getting an active, energetic 4- to 6-year-old to separate from her mother and climb into a scary machine that encases her head and makes weird noises. Then imagine asking her to lie completely still, in near darkness, for 45 minutes or more while concentrating on a series of mental tasks.
Normally, children this young must be sedated for functional MRI studies, which give scientists a glimpse of the brain at work by measuring shifts in blood flow and oxygenation. Children's researchers Nora Raschle and Nadine Gaab, PhD have found a fun way to image very young children without the use of sedation.
Read more
Fall 2009 -- Vector magazine
Catching dyslexia in pre-readers
Developmental dyslexia affects 5 to 17 percent of children, often causing lasting frustration. Statistics show that children with reading problems are more apt to drop out of school and enter the juvenile justice system. But research in Children's Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience suggests that much frustration could be avoided by spotting children at risk for dyslexia and intervening as early as age 4?before reading instruction begins.
"Currently, dyslexia can only be diagnosed in second or third grade," says senior investigator Nadine Gaab, PhD. "In my opinion, that's way too late."
Read more
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February 2008 -- CHB DREAM magazine
Easy listening
Nadine Gaab, PhD, a researcher in Children's Developmental Medicine Center Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, is taking an alternative approach to studying dyslexia by focusing on how children process sounds and investigating whether musical training can improve reading. "It's a very neglected area in research," she says. "Many studies look at dyslexia's connection to the visual system but not the auditory." The idea that some dyslexics could have a problem processing sound was introduced in the 1970s, but it had never been tested using brain imaging. So Gaab decided to use functional MRI (which maps changes in the brain) to examine how the brains of 9- to 12-year-olds with dyslexia responded to sounds, before and after using educational software called Fast ForWord Language.
Read more
February 2008 -- CHB DREAM magazine
From bench to bedside to classroom
Gaab is part of a growing body of scientists who find that neuroscience is sadly estranged from real-life applications and want to bridge this gap. As part of a burgeoning field called neuro-education, Gaab is opening channels of communication between cognitive neuroscience and the education system by taking what she discovers in the lab and bringing it into local classrooms to share with teachers, who can then incorporate her discoveries into their curricula.
Read more
December 2007 -- BrainConnection.com
Sound Training Rewires Dyslexic Children's Brains For Reading
A very recently published brain-imaging study suggests that children with developmental dyslexia struggle with reading because their brains do not process fast-changing sounds properly. Moreover the study found that with the help of computerized sound training, the children with developmental dyslexia were able to literally rewire their brain. This resulted in more accurate sound processing and hence better language and reading.
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December 6, 2007 -- NBC News story
TV interview with Nadine Gaab
To find out more about what people with dyslexia are capable of and how far they can get, NBC News wanted to talk to Nadine Gaab and benefit from her knowledge of the field.
Watch the interview right now.
November 5, 2007 -- NPR
Interview with Nadine Gaab
Some children with dyslexia struggle to read because their brains aren't properly wired to process fast-changing sounds. A new study finds that sound training via computer exercises can literally rewire the brains of these children and improve their reading skills. Here to discuss the study is Nadine Gaab, the Principle Investigator at the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at Children's Hospital Boston, and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard.
October 30, 2007 -- Children's Hospital Boston News Room
Sound training rewires dyslexic children's brains for reading
Some children with dyslexia struggle to read because their brains aren't properly wired to process fast-changing sounds, according to a brain-imaging study published this month in the journal Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience (online October 16). The study found that sound training via computer exercises can literally rewire children's brains, correcting the sound processing problem and improving reading. Read more
November 17, 2005 -- USA Today
Musically trained children process language better
Study shows people who learned to play musical instruments as children process spoken language faster and more accurately than their non-musical counterparts as adults. Read more
November 17, 2005 -- San Francisco Chronicle
Playing music can be good for your brain, Stanford study finds it helps the understanding of language
This study is the first to show that musical training improves how the brain processes the spoken word, improving its ability to distinguish between rapidly changing sounds that are key to understanding and using language. This finding could lead to improving the reading ability of children who have dyslexia and other reading problems. Read article here
November 15, 2005 -- Stanford Report
Musical training helps language processing, studies show
Researchers for the first time have shown that mastering a musical instrument improves the way the human brain processes parts of spoken language. The findings could bolster efforts to make music as much a part of elementary school education as reading and mathematics. Read article here
December 2005 -- ABC news
Music magic
Video footage on ABC News discussing our research about the potential impact of musical training on language processing and reading ability. See below
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 Music Magic
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An interview with Prof. John Gabrieli (MIT) on our research
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| 20.9 MB , 3:150 min QuickTime Player |
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