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Children's Hospital Boston researcher Nadine Gaab, PhD, spends most of her time in her lab at the Division of Developmental Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience studying how dyslexic children process sounds and investigating whether musical training can improve their reading. And while she's made groundbreaking discoveries, to her, that's not the only exciting part of her work.
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. She does this on her own time, encouraging teachers and associations to contact her, and reaching out to schools. "My biggest goal is to connect education and neuroscience since it's unbelievably important to have an impact on the education system, where we can help the most children," she says.
This takes the idea of translational research (from a scientist's laboratory to treating a patient) one step further: out of the hospital and into the community. "There's so much neuroscience research that could be applied in classrooms, but educators don't have access to this kind of information," Gaab says. Part of the reason for this is that researchers can't simply hand teachers the jargon-heavy articles they've written about their findings that are published in scientific journals, since teachers won't understand what implications the research has for teaching methods. "That's why it's important for us to have face-to-face interactions," Gaab says. "We can work together to see how research discoveries can be applied to children with and without learning problems."
When Gaab meets with teachers in Massachusetts schools, she talks about her work studying the brain and reading development, and describes her findings about the link between dyslexia, language development and music. She explains her latest research, which shows that some children with dyslexia struggle to read because their brains aren't properly wired to process fast-changing sounds, and that these children can be helped through sound training. Gaab also takes the opportunity to set the record straight about commonly held misconceptions about how the brain works. One example is the myth about left and right brain learners—the idea that people have two different ways of thinking because they use one hemisphere (the right side, thought to be visual, or the left, thought to be verbal), more than the other. "I don't think there's any scientific evidence for this," she says. "Nobody learns with just one hemisphere." Another myth she debunks is the idea that we only use 10 percent of our brains (we use all of our brain and no one knows where this commonly held misconception comes from).
Gaab doesn't go to the schools to lecture the teachers. She's also taking home valuable lessons of her own. "There's a lot of knowledge that's lost on both sides," she says. "Teachers who've worked directly with children for 30 years have so much to share about what's worked and not worked for them that's valuable for basic research," she says. Interestingly, teachers have told her that some kids with dyslexia seem to have a hard time with noisy classrooms, and that they already use music to teach reading and that it works well. "The more I know about how children learn in a day-to-day setting, the more I can fine-tune my assessment tools and studies going forward," she says. "It's a 50 / 50 relationship; I give teachers tools that I've found can help them, in turn, help children learn, and they tell me what actually works for them in a realistic way."
Since Gaab has been doing this kind of community outreach, she's even been getting requests from educators who have research ideas of their own. "It's great to work hand in hand," she says. "We can help actually make a difference—it's what makes it so much fun to me. I 'm able to satisfy my scientific curiosity but help children too. I can always celebrate and have a glass of champagne when I publish a research paper. But if I'm just doing that, I'm not helping anyone."
About her lab: The Gaab laboratory uses non invasive brain imaging techniques to better understand cognitive processes such as auditory perception, language or music processing as well as reading and their neurological bases in the developing brain. Currently, the Gaab lab is seeking children 4 to 17 with and without a diagnosis of developmental dyslexia as well as children with and without musical training. She's also looking for pre-reading children (age 4 to 6) with a family history of developmental dyslexia (one parent or sibling has it). For more information on her ongoing and upcoming studies, visit childrenshospital.org/research/gaablab or call 857-218-3022.
For more information about other research happening at the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience, visit childrenshospital.org/research/brainworks.
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