CREATIVE SUCCESS “Thirty-five percent of dyslexics will end up at the top of their fields — even in language-based fields — because their creativity pushes them to succeed ” says Dr. Rinat Green Psy.D. founder and executive director of the Kol Koreh nonprofit for children with learning disabilities in Israel

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t first Rachel didn’t think there was a problem. “The kindergarten teacher told me that my youngest son Sruli was having trouble recognizing letters but all my other kids were slow readers so I figured he was just like them ” Rachel remembers. Besides Sruli was a sociable bright kid — extremely creative and quick on the uptake.

By the time Sruli entered first grade however Rachel’s laissez-faire approach morphed into alarm. “I sent him to school every day in tears” she says. “The learning was proving difficult and he was getting angry as a result. He was telling himself: ‘I’m stupid. I’m stupid.’ I knew he wasn’t — and it was killing me.”

Rachel didn’t realize that Sruli fit the classic profile of a child suffering from dyslexia a general term for disorders that affect a person’s ability to read or interpret letters and symbols. Often referred to as the “hidden disability” the condition has a habit of going frequently undetected as it chiefly affects people of average or above average intelligence.

A Symphony of Neurons

The seemingly simple act of reading actually involves many different steps and multiple parts of the brain. As you read this article for instance your brain first has to capture the visual lines and curves that make up each letter — connecting those letters with sounds and connecting those sounds to words. Your brain also has to retrieve the information it has stored about each particular word — that for instance the letters D-O-G mean a four-legged furry pet. And when reading something as long as this article your brain has to process the information in every sentence paragraph and section and then connect all of the pieces together giving you overall comprehension.

Most of us rarely take note of the countless times throughout the day that we stop to read. That’s because we don’t stop to read. We just read. The neurolinguistic synergy comes naturally — without us ever recognizing the magnitude of the miracle that’s just taken place.

Not so for someone struggling with dyslexia. “MRI testing — scans that use magnetic fields to take images of a person’s brain — shows structural differences in the brain of a person with dyslexia — or its related disorders — which affects his ability to process and retain symbols and letters like other people do” explains Dr. Rinat Green Psy.D. founder and executive director of the Kol Koreh nonprofit for children with learning disabilities in Israel.

Sometimes brain differences may lead to problems with learning basic arithmetic facts processing numbers and solving mathematical calculations — a learning disorder officially recognized as developmental dyscalculia. In other instances they may lead to dysgraphia — an impaired handwriting and spelling disability. These lesser learning disabilities often occur in association with dyslexia but do not affect all dyslexics.

Dr. Green cites an important long-term study carried out at Yale that suggests as much as 20 percent of the population is affected by dyslexia. In an average classroom of 25 kids that would translate to five children who struggle to some extent. And that’s not all. “Dyslexia can’t be cured ” says Dr. Green. “It’s the way their brain is built. It’s like someone with a predisposition toward heaviness — they’ll always have to watch their weight.”

In her book Overcoming Dyslexia Sally Shaywitz M.D. points out that it’s now widely believed that sophisticated behaviors such as reading originate within widely distributed neural pathways and not within narrowly confined sections of the brain as was once thought.  It’s “by a symphony of neurons rather than by a single section of the orchestra ” Dr. Shaywitz writes.