This question gets best answered with knowing what areas of the brain are involved in dyslexia. Those areas are:
The right side of the cerebellum
The left parietal-temporal-occipital (PTO) junction
The left prefrontal cortex
Reading is not the only issue with people with Dyslexia, but we’ll use reading for this example. When we read, we are using those areas of the brain (and a few other areas as well). While reading, the cerebellum coordinates things, the PTO decodes the words, and that information is projected forward to the prefrontal cortex for understanding and comprehension. Sometimes running a child through a reading program may not suffice. That is because we find that these people suffering from Dyslexia’s cerebellum and PTO are just not up to the task and reading alone does not fix this problem.
Think of the brain like an orchestra. In this case the cerebellum is the strings, the PTO is the brass, and the prefrontal cortex is our percussion. The strings and brass are playing a little lower and slower. The lack of coordination from the cerebellum does not allow the eyes to move how they should, and the lack of decoding does not allow for the words to be broken down for understanding while they are reading to themselves or aloud. Now, this could be different when asked to listen to a story and understand it, why? Because the patient’s auditory processing networks can be intact enough to comprehend what is being read, but when asked to use other areas of their brain that are not quite where they should be, that is where they have their challenges.
At HML we run tailored and specific sensory, motor, oculomotor (eye movement), vestibular (inner ear), exercises to strengthen our strings and brass. This gets these areas to work more efficiently and that allows the patient to read more efficiently. This is done through our functional neurological process and this means that each patient’s care plan can be just the slightest of different to meet their needs.
To learn more on dyslexia see The Dr Alex Show Podcast available everywhere, as well as our other posts on Dyslexia and other learning disorders. Learn more about the Functional Neurological process to see how we make our care plans for our patients.