I was at Scientific Learning yesterday, participating in the filming of a Canadian Broadcasting System-produced documentary, and during one break, had a brief discussion with Bob Bowen (the Scientific Learning President/CEO) about state achievement test scores in one Louisiana school district in which we’ve been tracking kid performance over time. Two years ago, the average kid in this district was about standard deviation below the state average, on their overall state achievement test ealuation. Not too good. Near the bottom, in the state. Two years later, after Fast ForWord training, the average kid has passed the normal median and children are still moving upward in performance, against the distribution of kids from all across the state. Gains weren’t limited to language and reading skills; ALL indices (including math scores) move up, sharply.

Think of these children, one at a time, breaking out from a life of limited prospect and achievement, increasingly full of it! It literally sends a chill down my spine. My only disappointment: We’ve only manage to engage about 1.2 million kids in these forms of brain plasticity-based training, up to this date. 30 or 40 or 50 times that many could benefit substantially from its use, in the U.S. alone. Let’s get going, America!

In his Comments, Daniel has asked a lot of questions, and I thought that I’d take a minute to answer two of them. First, after I reviewed a book (Elyn Saks, The Center Cannot Hold, Hyperion:New York, 2007) in which a schizophrenic individual provided her personal descriptions of her life with this illness, he asked how I (a scientist) could know that a first-person account like hers was truthful.

The short answer is that I (a scientist) cannot know. Subjective evidence provided by any individual introspective reporter has a limited value in science. On the other hand, I (scientists) know a LOT about the disease processes that alter behavioral function in schizophrenia, and scientists have conducted thousands of studies variously measuring the performance abilities of populations of schizophrenic patients, using experimental strategies that are designed to eliminate the possibilities of false reporting or deception. Scientists appropriately subject this accumulated information to statistical analyses that informs us about measures of certainty/uncertainty, and on the basis of this wider knowledge, and having read a number of other consistent first-person accounts, Gwyn Saks personal accounts ring true. I applaud the bravery and the effort that this apparently-strong, intelligent woman has made, to provide us with a highly informative and apparently unvarnished account of her life with this devastating illness. However, as a scientist, her individual reporting necessarily falls into a non-fact (subjective) category.

In the same questioning vein, Daniel asks how you can know that students who show powerful advances from using a brain plasticity-based training program (see May 9th blog) aren’t improving just because they perceive these new activities as being exciting, and rewarding. Daniel, the reason that randomly-assigned intent-to-treat controlled trials with psychologically-balanced “control” therapies are the Gold Standard of outcomes assessment is to eliminate just this kind of uncertainty. These training programs have long since passed that test: if you match the hoopla for the “control” class, Fast ForWord training still accounted for much larger gains than were recorded in an equally exciting/fun/intense/serious control limb of the trial. Moreover, the magnitude of those gains were directly correlated with the gains in performance recorded in specific FFW exercises. That argues strongly that those exercise gains translate to kid-performance gains. Or put another way, they can ONLY come from the specific training provided by FFW. Finally, other studies have shown that this training remodels the brains of trained children (they’re “higher-performing” = “more normal” after than before training). It’s hard to fool Mother Nature in such studies, Daniel!

If you look across the landscape of claims for the thousands of things that have been created and sold to make children or adults smarter or more capable, Daniel, you WOULD discover that the vast majority of claims come from non-controlled trials. Exactly the kinds of misgivings that you raise may apply for them. NOT SO, for the FFW kid-training programs, or the Posit Science Brain Fitness or Insight training programs. Controlled outcomes trials are costly, and complicated to organize and conduct. Alas, there is just no substitute for them, if the goal is to determine whether or not your programs really work.

Our rule when reading about “Ten Misconceptions About Aging” is that you read about prior “misconceptions” before your are entitled to read about this current one, MC #6. If you haven’t done your homework, see blogs on this subject on November 7th, December 5th, April 29th, May 1st and May 5th. Then come back and read about……

Misconception 6. Alzheimers Disease pathology (amyloid plaques; neurofibrillary tangles) directly causes memory and cognitive losses in aging.

Most scientists now understand that while AD pathology and cognitive performance abilities are correlated for large populations (the more “diseased” your brain, on the statistical average, the greater your cognitive difficulties), the individual variability in the relationship between your behavior and the physical expressions of this “disease” is great. One of the first demonstrations of this fact came from the “Nun Study” led by the University of Kentucky professor David Snowdon, who showed that brain pathology documented at autopsy did not always jibe with behaviorally assessments and quality of life, documented in a large order of Roman Catholic nuns. Those studies described examples of Sisters with relatively advanced “pathology” who were doing remarkably well behaviorally; as well as other sisters with milder pathology who were (behaviorally, and in their quality of life) doing poorly.

At about the same time, a second autopsy study conducted from the brains of Swedes near retirement age (approximately 65) revealed that a substantial proportion of those normal individuals had frank AD pathology. A Swedish scientist told me that on the basis of this evidence, the government in Stockholm debated whether or not they should reconsider the automatic renewal of driver’s licenses for retired citizens, given the fact that, on the basis of brain pathology, such a large proportion of them “had Alzheimers”. It took them awhile to come to an alternative conclusion: If the disease is defined in terms of functional (behavioral) criteria, maybe the onset of pathology does not equate with the onset of the “Disease”.

The conclusion that a large proportion of “normal” folk (circa 40% over 65) have a significant degree of ongoing AD pathology has been elaborated in a number of more recent studies by scientists who have developed labels for marking amyloid bodies (and with less precision, microtubular “tangles”) in living subjects, recorded using positron emission tomography (PET imaging). These latter studies show that if you’re over 70 and normal, there’s an even-money chance that your brain appears to be in AD’s clutches, and that as with the nuns, you (your cognitive abilities; your quality of life) can be in pretty bad shape or pretty good shape, with essentially equivalent evident AD pathology.

Over-riding these issues of disease progression is a simple question: How DO the functional losses used to define AD relate to/arise from this pathology?! After all, cognitive decline begins in the 3rd or 4th decade of life, and losses are relatively steady decade by decade, over time. The losses recorded in AD appear to be a predictable, accelerated extension of losses that have been progressing in most individuals for decades. How are AD losses DIFFERENT? In what sense are AD-generated losses SPECIAL? How, EXACTLY, does the disease pathology account for the losses?

In my view, AD pathology represents one of the most severe of a long list of factors that simply degrade the ability of the brain to translate what it sees, hears, feels, smells and tastes in actions crucial for controlling thought and action and self-reference. While AD pathology leads to memory and cognitive losses (of course), the consequences of the advancing brain damage incurred in the “illness” are non-specific, and are not directly related to specific neurological processes. Amyloid bodies are known to poison (disable) the cortical circuitry within its neighborhood; each “tangle”-filled neuron is taken off-line, no longer capable of contributing to the representation of perceptions or to make its contribution to cognition or action control. As AD progresses, amyloid “bombs” rain down on the brain, and tangle-filled neurons progressively remove more and more neurons from cortical circuits.

We and other scientists have hypothesized that if an individual is making the most out of their brain machinery by engaging it in ways that continuously sharpen and strengthen its resolving power, they can continue to do pretty well, even in the face of significant amyloid-body poisoning and tangled-neuron losses. On the other hand, if the brain has not been taken very good care of, and is already a poor resolver from the time of onset of the pathology, it shall not take too much additional AD-contributed pathology to ultimately-profoundly disable it.

So if you’re a normal 70-year-old who happens to have a brain that is polka-dotted with growing numbers of amyloid plaques, take heart, because frank pathology does NOT mean certain disaster. But on other hand, for prudence’s sake, get thee to the brain gym, because it may just save your bacon.

Over the past three years, we have conducted several research projects at Rossmoor, a retirement community with about 9,000 residents about 20 miles east of San Francisco. Rossmoor is in a beautiful rural setting in a narrow valley surrounded by oak-cloaked hills. I have given a number of lectures there, and am always struck by the great sense of peace and community expressed by its residents. Two Rossmoor citizens stand out for me, and I would like to award them the second “Merzie Prize” for 2007-8, this time in my Do-Gooder Private Citizen category. Leonard Krauss is the President of the Rossmoor computer club, and he’s generously helped dozens of his friends and neighbors get onto computer-based training for the sake of their brain health. Len is a beautiful example of a straight-shooting, bonafide nice guy who makes very good use of his rich technical background almost every day to help people. He appears (of course) to enjoy every minute of it.

His friend and collaborator Stan Karansky is a retired medical doctor in his 90’s. If you were to meet and talk with Stan, you would instinctively peg him as a far younger man, because Stan has been a devotee of brain fitness training, and is just full of life — a walking advertisement for the benefits of keeping your brain in good shape! Given his scientific and medical background, Stan is informed about the principles of brain plasticity, and is doing his damnedest to explain to his fellow citizens that this kind of exercise is “what the doctor ordered”. He’s talked a lot of ‘em into it, and they’re the better for it! Way to go, Stan!

I tip my hat — and hereby award a 2008 Merzie Prize — to these two very fine men, of EXTRAORDINARY intelligence and good will!

I just read a report from the Everett, Massachusetts school district that illustrates what CAN be achieved in helping children catch up, in a very short time. Everett is a north-Boston suburb that was once rated as a top Massachusetts district, but a change in its demographics over the past 40 years has greatly increased the challenges that it faces. 55 languages are now represented in its approximately 6,000 students; 44% of its children are ELLs. A large proportion of its students are from low SES households.

In the 2006-2007 school year, 1290 of the District’s children were enrolled in the intensive brain-plasticity-based Fast ForWord language and reading training programs, in 6 Everett schools. As a result:

1) The percentage of the enrolled students who scored as proficient in reading in these schools jumped from 16 to 38%.

About 30% of American school-age children are proficient readers. Think of what it means, kid by kid, to convert so many children to this higher status with only one year of special effort. Think what it means for each of these schools, to shoot up from a below-average academic training environment to a significantly-above-average environment in a single year. It shall be exciting to see how many MORE children cross this threshold in 2007-2008! It shall be fun to see how far these schools can progress in achievement, across the landscape of Massachusetts public schools!

2) Unprecented gains in State of Massachusetts test scores were recorded for both reading and math in these 6 schools. One school site (Parlin) at which FFW was employed applied was especially impressively transformed, in one year, from having the lowest state test achievement scores in both reading and math in the District, to having the highest.

3) Overall reading comprehension scores over this one year advanced for the average kid by about 2 years. It continues to be fascinating to me that most educational authorities still do not recognize this intensive brain science-based language training (FFW) as a “reading” program. ENABLING successful reading by ‘fixing’ a neurological resource that crucially supports it is just not good enough, for the keepers of the “science of education” or “reading science” flame!

This is a fairly typical story for a school district in which this brain science-based training program has been well-administered. Children do not have to be “left behind”. Kids can catch up. You can see many equally compelling examples of this at

A large, controlled study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education has just shown that a widely mandated program (Reading First) delivered to promulgate ‘best practices’ for reading education out to American schools in need of help as a >$1 billion part of the “No Child Left Behind” program leaves children behind. The Reading First program was established by “No Child Left Behind legislation in 2002, with three main goals. The first was to assure that schools used scientifically accepted “best practices” (training strategies; materials) in reading instruction. The second goal was to train educators and adminstrators in ways that could assure that these best instructional practies were appropriately and effectively delivered. A third goal was to assess the effectiveness of this new approach for achieving reading-education improvement.

You’d think that Goal 3 would be on the Year 1 agenda. Not so. Six years (with billions spent on reading instruction) later, we learn that schools that followed these promulgated best practices are indistinguishable from those who did not.

How CAN it be that our government authorities broadly mandate a program that doesn’t work? Why HAS educational science related to reading achievement done such a poor job of delivering out strategies that substantially and unequivocally move the reading proficiency meter in American schools? Why IS there almost no change in the percentage of proficient readers (a pathetic 30% or so of readers in American public schools) achieved, despite our great and sincere and costly efforts over the past several decades (much less over the past 6 years of NCLB) — even while more and more REALLY failing students aren’t being counted in these statistics because millions of failing young people prematurely leave middle and high schools?

We citizens are entitled to answers to these questions.

When Reid Lyon, a distinguished Department of Education leader who helped draft Reading First programs into legislation has talked about its values, he has repeatedly argued that it had led to key changes in American schools. He’s noted that because of its extensive educator-training initiatives, reading educators all across the country are now well informed about the science of reading. Because of Reading First, they now understand, can recite and apply those “scientific best practices”.

Which leads me to a final comment, and a question:

My comment: Maybe there is something lacking in those “scientific best practices”.

My question: How long will it be before the Department of Education (or the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development) comes to realize that the scientific best practices promulgated by programs like Reading First — aren’t (i.e., either particularly scientific, or best practices)?

In two earlier blogs (last August 3rd, 5th), I briefly discussed some aspects of the neuroscience of “reactive attachment disorders” (RADs). That evoked an informative series of comments from individuals whose families or friends had struggled with this problem. One comment, by “Teletype”, indicated that I did not have an accurate view of the Self. “You don’t provide an explanation of what could account for people’s differences — differences in responses, opinions, emotions, likes/dislikes, behavior, things said and not said, extent of non-verbal communication and quality of it, etc. THIS is the self, not the other things.”

To which I respond, “Balderdash!”

But before explaining why, let me re-state how I described the development of a baby “Self” that is attached to a parent — or vice versa — from the earlier blog:

Within the womb, especially in the third trimester when the fetus makes us very aware of its presence, it literally becomes a part of the Self that is its mother. Through millions of neurologically constructed (wired!) associations, the baby and mother are, in mom’s brain, an integrated entity. Is it hardly surprising, then, that in the natural course of things most mothers are almost super-naturally attached to their new-born infants. This attachment is further nurtured and elaborated through the mother’s close physical and emotional attachment ot the infant post-natally. That infant is a regular, constant, emotionally important part of the mother’s (father’s, grandparent’s, sibling’s) life on a level at which it is literally encorporated into THEIR Selves. A mother or close and constant caregiver is LITERALLY bonded — attached — to the Person who loves them, in neurological as well as emotional terms.

In the normal case, the same kind of attachment is also growing in the backward direction, from the mother to the infant. In this case, attachment is less cerebral. The infant receives warmth, nourishment, and many other rewards from his or her mother. The mother is a source of food, safety, comfort, and countless little pleasures. The baby quickly understands that their mother (or other continous care-giver) provides a safe base of operations for exploration and adventure. One of the most non-intuitive discoveries in the study of infant-child bonding is that the most secure infants have (on the statistical average) the greatest curiosity and the strongest explorative and inventive instincts. It has been argued that this occurs because such a child is operating from the very secure base and reliability for having its primary needs met by its mother.

If emotional responses were merely delivered to us via a handoff from Mother Nature or the Creator of the Universe as Teletype suggests, then why does infant deprivation matter so damn much. Why is the PERSON the young child is, so distorted in their “responses, opinions, emotional responses, likes and dislikes…, things that they say and don’t say?” Or to put it another way, where in heavens do you think our responses, opinions, emotional responses, all of our likes and dislikes beyond the primitive, most aspects of our specific behaviors, and things that we say and don’t say COME from, Teletype?! Out of the thin air?! THEY GROW WITHIN US, THROUGH BRAIN PLASTICITY, Teletype. Collectively, they ARE us.

Our plastic brain creates a model of the external world AND of itSELF from its passage through life — from its experiences — by physically remodeling its detailed connections, i.e., BY BRAIN PLASTICITY.

That is certainly also the case in a child that develops a RAD. Because it’s world is so impoverished and distorted, it has to create a model of both the world and itSelf under very difficult conditions. It is little wonder that it just can’t get it right! From this neuroscience perspective, what IS missing for such a child in the experiences that drive plastic changes and shape the operations of the Self, in the domain of emotional response and control as it relates to human attachment?

Such a child has been impoverished in behaviors that have consequences in their early histories. Almost nothing that almost-continuously-neglected child did in early childhood mattered. Their little brains were starved for those many thousands of moments in normal infants for which their actions lead to an appropriate, timely, caregiver-delivered responses. Needs WEREN’T responded to, WEREN’T met.

Beyond that deprivation, the limited care provided in a socially impoverished environment can be interpreted by the brain as punishing. Infant rashes and dirty diapers and hunger are, from the brain’s perspective, BAD outcomes, ultimately associated with absent and neglectful and resented adult care-givers. In such a scenario, in the child’s brain:

1) the brain machinery that reliably relates the child’s actions to predictable, timely, positive external-agent-delivered consequences is very poorly developed;

2) the processes that normally massively associate positive-attachment-related behaviors that establish the crucial two-way linkage of the child’s and parent’s SELF-creation are grossly stunted.

3) care-giving adults predict bad outcomes.

Consider another example. A child is raised in a family a) in which there is little talking (just as in the orphanage). In that family, b) most verbal interactions between adults and that child are approbations (probably ALSO common in some orphanage environments), and are c) commonly accompanied by physical abuse, and by d) neglect.

This is (alas) an altogether far too common an American scenario. When such a child goes to school, they enter an environment that is full of happy talkers. Not so, with high likelihood, our neglected, language- and socially-impoverished child. They REJECT talking and socializing (school). They can come to resent and rebel against their good-hearted classroom teacher — for the same kinds of reasons that those RAD kids can reject loving care-givers. If they chronically misbehave (have a “behavior disorder) and fail in school from the outset, their prospects for later imprisonment are far higher than their prospects for later emotional and financial and social prosperity.

Our challenge is to help all these children in need build the fundamental neurological foundations that associate their actions with positive consequences expressed by the actions of the adults that “rule” their lives — caregivers, teachers, grandparents, therapists, etc. — and by their peers. I have been thinking a lot about how to use a technological approach to assist a responsible care-giver or teacher or therapist in providing a intensive brain-training boost to help build and sustaining these fundamental skills in these entirely innocent young children. More about that subject, in a later blog.

If you haven’t done your homework (haven’t read “misconceptions 1-4″), go do it, then read this one. You’ll find those entries on November 7th, December 5th, April 29th, and May 1st. Which lead us to:

Misconception 5. Our functional abilities at any stage of life are a handoff from Mother Nature or the Creator of the Universe.

One of the most common notions about your cognitive losses as you grow older is that they simply express the work of that Mother, Nature. You’re young, you’re old. You’re clumsy, you’re agile. You have a large repertoire of funny stories, you can’t tell a good joke to save your soul. You’re good at math, you’re bad at math. You have a memory like a tack, you can’t remember how to get the bathroom. It’s just your lot, in life — your God-given (inherited) endowment — to be old, clumsy, humorless, bad at math, and desperately looking for the bathroom. After all, YOU, the person that you are, are just a hand-off from the Creator of the Universe (or from Mother Nature).

It’s not true. YOU are a marvelous creation that arose in your brain, shaped in a million ways by all of the things that YOU did in life. Your abilities, your special skills, all of your knowledge, all of the people and specific things that really matter to you, all of those crystallized beliefs and principles that guide and structure your life — ALL OF IT — emerged, through brain plasticity, within your skull, within your lifetime.

YOU are your OWN creation.

YOU are in CHARGE of yourSELF, and of keeping it (your brain) in good shape!

Maintaining the healthy PERSON (brain) is an important goal for any sensible individual, at every age in life. You can always be better, stronger, more capable, more accomplished, still growing in understanding — because your brain is PLASTIC. Because all ability has been/is conferred via its plasticity, and at any age, improvement in brain function can be achieved, and
YOU CAN BE BETTER.

So the next time you hear yourself saying “I’m just old. My old brain is just wearing out. There is really nothing I can do about it….” just slap yourself.

Stop making excuses and take responsibility for the thoughtless way you’ve been taking care of yourSELF, and get thee to the brain fitness center!

Many of you may have seen this program. At last count, it has been shown several thousand times. Almost every PBS station has repeatedly aired it. Moreover, like a bad penny, it’ll show up again, in the next pledge-break period! All of this attention stems from its success.

PBS viewers have made this one of the most successful (perhaps in the end, THE single most effective) fund-raising programs in history. My colleagues and I at Posit are very proud of that fact, for three reasons.

First, it means that many hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals have been educated about brain plasticity, as a resource that they can employ to improve their brain health and mental vitality.

Second, it means that tens of thousands of individuals in need of help have received it, via our donation of these many thousands of copies of the Brain Fitness Program to PBS.

Third, Public Broadcasting is an important informational and educational resource for every American citizen, and we are VERY happy to contribute so materially to its continuing good health.

Because of its success, PBS is providing support for the production of a second “Brain Fitness Program”……… coming into your home from a PBS station near you, not too far into the future!

An important recent study reported by scientists from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cornell and Rutgers universities (Gaab N, Gabrieli JD, Deutsch GK, Tallal P, Temple E, Restor Neurol Neurosci 25:295-310, 2007) has documented the emergence of more normal brain response patterns resulting from intensive brain plasticity-based training, in children with impairments in language and reading abilities. Significant improvements in language and reading (see Temple et al., PNAS 100:2860-5, 2003) in these special children resulted from their completion of Scientific Learning’s Fast ForWord-Language exercise suite (see www.scientificlearning.com). A large body of earlier studies had already shown that such improvements are at least substantially attributable to training-driven gains in the accuracy and the speed of processing of sound stimuli (improved “temporal processing”).

That conclusion was further supported by these current studies. They showed that a specific region in the lateral frontal cortex was strongly activated in a temporally-demanding sound reception task, in every one of 20 ‘control’ children (Girl and Boy Scouts earning a merit badge who had normal language and reading abilities). By contrast, this frontal cortex zone was not significantly activated in any of the 20 reading-and-language impaired kids performing the same temporally-demanding task. That’s 20 for 20 vs 0 for 20! It certainly would not be difficult to determine which kids were performing better, in the language arts, in the schoolhouse!

After Fast ForWord training, most of these struggling children a) substantially overcame their impairments in language and reading, and b) now had more normal responses evoked while performing these challenging sound reception tasks, in this key frontal cortex region.

Guess whose grades now improved in school!