On that question, he drew inspiration from one of the most influential and honored figures in the history of research into neural plasticity: Michael Merzenich. In the early 1980s, when most neuroscientists still believed that virtually all areas of the brain were permanently hardwired to handle only particular types of information, Merzenich published studies showing that, in a matter of weeks, he could change which areas of a monkey’s brain handled information from, say, the first digit of its left hand—simply by disabling the second digit. Rather than sitting idle when nerve signals stop coming, the area of the brain previously devoted to one finger begins processing information from another. Over the following three decades, Merzenich built on this observation to show that animals, including humans, could benefit from neural reassignment: as more attention is given to distinguishing between pinpoint differences in touch, sound, or sight, the area of the brain devoted to that distinction expands and, in the process, gets better at it . Dyslexic children , he found, could be trained to discern subtle differences in sounds to enable them to better understand spoken language; elderly drivers in their seventies could likewise be trained to regain the wider field of view that they had gradually lost over a period of decades. From Merzenich’s groundbreaking research, Klingberg took two principles. First , to be successful, training should be offered in relatively short bursts of twenty to thirty minutes a day, but repeated four to six times a week for at least four weeks. Second, the training schedule should be continuously adapted to the capacity limit of the individual being trained. It can’t be too easy; it can’t be too hard; it has to be right at the edge, and it has to stay at that edge, getting harder as the person gets better. Together, these two principles developed by Merzenich made for a standardized regimen: four weeks of short daily bursts of intense training that is continuously adapted to remain always at a person’s capacity limit. That regimen would prove crucial not only to Klingberg’s progress, but to the entire field’s. For the purposes of his study, aimed at training working memory, Klingberg enrolled fourteen children between the ages of seven and fifteen diagnosed with ADHD by a pediatrician. All of the children were asked to spend twenty-five minutes per day, five days a week, for five weeks playing a variety of computerized working-memory games designed from scratch by a programmer , Jonas Beckeman . But half of the kids played games that adaptively Hurley, Dan (2013-12-26). Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power (pp. 5-6). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition. Hurley, Dan (2013-12-26). Smarter: The New Science of Building Brain Power (p. 5). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 22:48:56 +0000
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