Is TV Bad For Your Child?

The issue of kids watching television has been a hot debate in recent years. Most experts agree that while TV isn’t inherently bad, it should be watched only in small doses. The AAP changed their policy a few years ago to recommend that children under the age of 2 watch no TV at all, and children over that age watch only small amounts, no more than an hour a day. Still, for better or for worse television is a part of daily life in most homes. Most children do watch some television during the day, and there are benefits to be gained from...

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What Every Parent Should Know About Their Baby’s Developing Brain (Part 2)

October 28, 2010 by Martha Burns, Ph.D In my August post, I discussed how the primary job of the infant brain is to detect relevant information about language and the environment in which the baby is born and to design itself, in a relatively short period of time, to be an expert at that language and environment. This month, we will continue the discussion of how the brain develops in a young infant. The genes more or less provide the blueprint for the brain’s hardware and early wiring, but after a child is born, and perhaps even for several...

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Celebrities and Successful Entrepreneurs with Dsylexia

Billy Bob Thornton Talks About Dyslexia Orlando Bloom on Having Dyslexia Successful Entrepreneurs with Dyslexia Richard Branson ...

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Language delays found in siblings of children with autism

October 1, 2010 his graph tracks the symptoms of girls in one category of families affected by autism. Yellow denotes girls with histories of language delay and autistic traits who were never formally diagnosed as having an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Blue represents unaffected girls, red represents those diagnosed with ASD. Credit: Image courtesy of The American Journal...

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Misdiagnosing ADHD

According to a study released by the University of Michigan, nearly 1 million children in the United States are potentially misdiagnosed with ADHD. The research was conducted, not by a medical group, but by economist Todd Elder in the Journal of Health Economics (Elder et al. The importance of relative standards in ADHD diagnoses: Evidence based on exact birth dates. Journal of Health Economics, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2010.06.003). Elder found that the youngest or often the most immature children are misdiagnosed with the ADHD label...

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Top 10 snappy answers to annoying comments about autism

If you're a parent with a child on the spectrum, you've probably responded to the same annoying remarks and questions a thousand times. Here's a handy list of responses that...you'll probably never use out loud (but are fun to imagine using)! 1. He can’t be autistic -- he can talk! (or make eye contact, smile, engage)And yet, amazingly, he’s still autistic! Y’see, autism is a spectrum disorder, and that means … 2. Oh, she must be SO good at math! (or science or music)Actually, her great talent is in memorizing and reciting lines from Sponge...

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Deaf people 'can rewire brains'

People deaf from birth may be able to reassign the area of their brain used for hearing to boost their sight, suggests a study. Improved peripheral vision, often reported by deaf people, could be generated by the brain area which would normally deal with peripheral hearing. The Canadian research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, tested the theory using congenitally deaf cats. The researcher involved said the brain did not let unused space "go to waste". Both deaf and blind people frequently say their other senses are sharper by...

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Learn To Read Through Sound: Cognitive Neuroscientists Use Sound Training To Help Dyslexic Children Read

May 1, 2008 — Cognitive neuroscientists monitoring brain activity with fMRI found that children with dyslexia are often unable to process the fast-changing sounds used in spoken language. Sound training dedicated to teaching children to better process these sounds improves their ability to manipulate words and their phonetic components, which translates into better reading Dyslexia can be a frustrating condition, making it difficult for children to read. Many think it is a visual issue, but a new study using a computer game reveals the problem...

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