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I've been told a lot of things about dyslexia over the years; the basic test in UK schools is whether ones written IQ is lower than your verbal IQ. This I think leads to a lot of mis-diagnosis if you were looking for a medical condition as it would obviously include intelligent lazy people. Whether you think this counts as a 'scientific basis' depends upon whether you consider IQ tests as scientific.
I've also participated in physiological experiments on dyslexics where they were attempting to show that dyslexics are especially good at some things. In this particular test we were asked to think of as many uses for a piece of cloth as possible in 60 seconds. They were hoping to show that dyslexics think of roughly 3 times as many uses in the first minute as a 'normal' person.
I've been told that dyslexics have less connections between the two lobes of the brain, instead of too many as with epileptics. This can apparently lead to dyslexics going into mild trances, staring vacantly into space.
They say Einstein’s brain had very furry dendrites, BTW he left explicit instructions that he did NOT want his brain dissected, but hey.
So what’s my point, hmm well I once knew somebody with a brain very similar to my own in some respects, she was also called a dyslexic. I didn’t really realize how different I was until I meet somebody who was actually like me, you just think everybody feels that way. I don't know if we are dyslexic, schizophrenic, sociopath, neurotic, lazy, just bad or perhaps geniuses. What is clear is that some people have very different minds to those of others. I mean we like to think in the 'Grey's Anatomy' version of medical science, the idea that the human form and function can be described with reference to a standard form. However, I think our understanding of physiology, psychology, pharmacology et cetera, will have to encompass the fact that there are in fact a variety of genotypes and phenotypes of human out there. We differ in both nature and nurture, this has implications in our mental and physical development which cannot be ignored. Furthermore these variations are not a deviation from the norm, they are the norm. There is no standard human form, I mean we range from 3" to 8" in adult height, we have between four and seven digits on each extremity, we come in several different colours. There are even people out there with 3 kidneys, horns, multiple nipples, webbed feet, vestigial gills, full body hair and the inability to perceive the colour green, although not usually all at the same time. There are even people out there with deadly allergic reactions to prawns, the bloody freaks! 
So what I'm getting at is sort of in answer to some questions raised by this thread;
Does everyone diagnosed with dyslexia in education share a common pathology? No, almost certainly not.
Could some kids use an alternative way of learning literacy and numeracy? Almost certainly yes.
I hope that makes sense, all this thinking about my brain is giving me a headache.  |
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