Writing in Cursive - More Than Making Loops on Paper

J. Richard Gentry Ph.D.Raising Readers, Writers, and Spellers

5 Brain-Based Reasons to Teach Handwriting in School

Cognitive psychology and neuroscience support teaching handwriting in school.

Teaching handwriting in elementary school is getting huge support from research incognitive psychology and neuroscience. Some state legislatures are paying attention and mandating that handwriting be put back in the elementary school curriculum. That’s smart. Handwriting absolutely helps support children’s literacy and academic development. Here’s what the research now says regarding both “why” and “how” to teach handwriting.

Five Brain-Based Reasons to Teach Handwriting: 3 “Whys” and 2 “Hows"

Why? #1. Handwriting helps kids develop reading circuitry in their brains.

If we want kids to learn to read, we should teach handwriting beginning in preschool. Brain scanning has demonstrated that handwriting in manuscript helps preschoolers learn their letters (James & Englehardt, 2012). In doing so the child who is learning to print letters is setting up the neural systems that underlie reading. How? By connecting several reading and handwriting distinct shared neural systems or networks in the human brain (James & Englehardt, 2012). Think of writing by hand as being indispensable for helping children develop a brain that reads with proficiency. That’s why schools that have thrown out teaching handwriting should bring it back.

Why? #2. Handwriting makes better writers and spellers and predicts reading and academic success.

The handwriting is on the wall. Research shows that learning to write by hand is a key component in improving both spelling ability and written composition. With beginners, handwriting experience facilitates letter learning (James, 2010; Longcamp et al., 2005), and letter learning not only sets up the neural systems that underlie reading, writing, and spelling but it is a primary predictor of later reading success (James & Engelhardt, 2012; Piasta & Wagner, 2010). In addition, handwriting fluency frees the child’s mind for more complex composing skills for making meaning (Dinehart, 2015). Much of the current handwriting research demonstrates immediate gains and lasting benefits for academic achievement. Even in upper elementary and middle school, research has shown that learning to write in cursive improved spelling and composing skills (Berninger, 2015). The takeaway? It’s worth taking the time in the daily curriculum and it’s worth the financial investment in teaching resources for handwriting.

Why? #3.  Handwriting makes both children—and adults—smarter! Close those laptops!

Learning handwriting in preschool is better than learning letters on the computer because research shows that handwriting in print—not keyboarding—leads to adult-like neural processing in the visual system of the preschool child’s developing reading brain (Stevenson & Just, 2014). In one study, researchers found gray matter volume and density correlating with higher handwriting quality, which signals more efficient neural processing and higher skills and ability (Gimenez et al., 2014). Furthermore, when older students lack fluency in their writing, composition skills suffer along with self-esteem, grades, and test scores (Stevenson & Just, 2014).

Even in adults handwriting is better than keyboarding for learning. Public Radio International’s Marc Sollinger reports Pam Mueller’s notetaking research at Princeton University that led Sollinger to champion handwriting and implore laptop writers to “Close Your Laptops!” and write notes in longhand. Mueller’s notetaking experiments found that typing on a laptop was much less effective for remembering and synthesizing information. Those lecturer-verbatim laptop notes weren’t as good as longhand for studying for the test or for retrieving information because ENCODING in writing—just as with preschoolers and kindergartners—is better for the learning brain than keyboarding.

How? #4. Start out with teacher modeling.

Exemplary veteran kindergarten teachers and researchers Eileen Fledgus, Isabell Cardonick, and I worked for over thirty years synthesizing the research and showing kindergarten and first grade teachers the benefits of teacher modeling for letter learning and writing. Even if children come to kindergarten classrooms unable to write their own names we have them drawing their story or drawing their information and writing meaningful pieces within a couple of months (Feldgus, Cardonick, & Gentry, in press). Now our techniques are supported by neuroscience and psychological research (see for example Puranik & Alobaita, 2012; Puranik,& Lonigan, 2011; Puranik, Lonigan, & Kim,2011).

How? #5. Teach handwriting directly and explicitly.

Handwriting is a complex skill engaging cognitive, perceptual, and motor skills simultaneously. It is best learned through direct instruction (Beringner, 2015; Berninger et al. 2006; Hanstra-Bletz and Blote, 1993; Maeland, 1992).

Some schools in the United States have stopped teaching manuscript explicitly in kindergarten and first grade, and stopped teaching cursive beginning in grade 3 ostensibly due to not having time to teach handwriting in elementary school. That’s a mistake. Handwriting for school children is a boon for reading, writing, and spelling. It’s still required in Great Britain—they are getting it right. It’s supported by research. We should be teaching handwriting (and spelling) in the U.S.

Invest in handwriting instruction, and as I reported in previous posts, invest in explicit spelling instruction. If you are a parent, a principal, a school board member, or aneducation administrator insist on direct handwriting and spelling instruction throughout primary and elementary school. Both are important stepping stones on the 21st century pathway to academic success.

What You Can Do To Help Prevent Alzheimer's

Georgia Ede MDDiagnosis: Diet

Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease Is Easier Than You Think

Science shines new light on root cause of memory problems.

Do you have Insulin Resistance?

If you don’t know, you’re not alone. This is perhaps the single most important question any of us can ask about our physical and mental health—yet most patients, and even many doctors, don’t know how to answer it.

Here in the U.S., insulin resistance has reached epidemic proportions: more than half of us are now insulin resistant. Insulin resistance is a hormonal condition that sets the stage throughout the body for inflammation and overgrowth, disrupts normal cholesterol and fat metabolism, and gradually destroys our ability to process carbohydrates.

Insulin resistance puts us at high risk for many undesirable diseases, including obesity, heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes.

Scarier still, researchers now understand that insulin resistance is a powerful force in the development of Alzheimer’s Disease. 

What is insulin resistance?

Insulin is a powerful metabolic hormone that orchestrates how cells access and process vital nutrients, including sugar (glucose).

In the body, one of insulin’s responsibilities is to unlock muscle and fat cells so they can absorb glucose from the bloodstream. When you eat something sweet or starchy that causes your blood sugar to spike, the pancreas releases insulin to usher the excess glucose out of the bloodstream and into cells. If blood sugar and insulin spike too high too often, cells will try to protect themselves from overexposure to insulin’s powerful effects by toning down their response to insulin—they become “insulin resistant.” In an effort to overcome this resistance, the pancreas releases even more insulin into the blood to try to keep glucose moving into cells. The more insulin levels rise, the more insulin resistant cells become. Over time, this vicious cycle can lead to persistently elevated blood glucose levels, or type 2 diabetes.

Insulin resistance and the brain

In the brain, it’s a different story. The brain is an energy hog that demands a constant supply of glucose. Glucose can freely leave the bloodstream, waltz across the blood-brain barrier, and even enter most brain cells—no insulin required. In fact, the level of glucose in the cerebrospinal fluid surrounding your brain is always about 60% as high as the level of glucose in your bloodstream—even if you have insulin resistance—so, the higher your blood sugar, the higher your brain sugar.

Not so with insulin—the higher your blood insulin levels, the more difficult it can become for insulin to penetrate the brain. This is because the receptors responsible for escorting insulin across the blood-brain barrier can become resistant to insulin, restricting the amount of insulin allowed into the brain. While most brain cells don’t require insulin in order to absorb glucose, they do require insulin in order to process glucose. Cells must have access to adequate insulin or they can’t transform glucose into the vital cellular components and energy they need to thrive.

Despite swimming in a sea of glucose, brain cells in people with insulin resistance literally begin starving to death. 

Insulin resistance and memory

Source: Suzi Smith, used with permission

Which brain cells go first? The hippocampus is the brain's memory center. Hippocampal cells require so much energy to do their important work that they often need extra boosts of glucose. While insulin is not required to let a normal amount of glucose into the hippocampus, these special glucose surges do require insulin, making thehippocampus particularly sensitive to insulin deficits. This explains why declining memory is one of the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s, despite the fact that Alzheimer’s Disease eventually destroys the whole brain.

Without adequate insulin, the vulnerable hippocampus struggles to record new memories, and over time begins to shrivel up and die. By the time a person notices symptoms of “Mild Cognitive Impairment” (pre-Alzheimer’s), the hippocampus has already shrunk by more than 10%.

Alzheimer’s Disease is Type 3 Diabetes

Source: Suzi Smith, used with permission

The major hallmarks of Alzheimer’s Disease—neurofibrillary tangles, amyloid plaques, and brain cell atrophy—can all be explained by insulin resistance. A staggering 80% of people with Alzheimer’s Disease have insulin resistance or full-blown type 2 diabetes. The connection between insulin resistance and Alzheimer’s Disease is now so firmly established that scientists have started referring to Alzheimer’s Disease as “Type 3 Diabetes.”

This does not mean that diabetes causes Alzheimer’s Disease—dementia can strike even if you don’t have diabetes. It’s more accurate to think of it this way: Insulin resistance of the body is type 2 diabetes; insulin resistance of the brain is type 3 diabetes. They are two separate diseases caused by the same underlying problem: insulin resistance.

Are you already on the road to Alzheimer’s Disease?

You may be surprised to learn that Alzheimer’s Disease begins long before any symptoms appear.

The brain sugar processing problem caused by insulin resistance is called “glucose hypometabolism.” This simply means that brain cells don’t have enough insulin to burn glucose at full capacity. The more insulin resistant you become, the more sluggish your brain glucose metabolism becomes. Glucose hypometabolism is an early marker of Alzheimer’s disease risk that can be visualized with special brain imaging studies called PET scans. Using this technology to study people of different ages, researchers have discovered that Alzheimer’s Disease is preceded by DECADES of gradually worsening glucose hypometabolism.

Brain glucose metabolism can be reduced by as much as 25% long before any memory problems become obvious. As a psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of college students, I find it positively chilling that scientists have found evidence of glucose hypometabolism in the brains of women as young as 24 years old.

Real hope for your future

We used to feel helpless in the face of Alzheimer’s Disease because we were told that all of the major risk factors for this devastating condition were beyond our control: age,genetics, and family history. We were sitting ducks, living in fear of the worst—until now.

The bad news is that insulin resistance has become so common that chances are you already have it to some degree.

The good news is that insulin resistance is a major risk factor for Alzheimer’s Disease that you CAN do something about.

Eating too many of the wrong carbohydrates too often is what causes blood sugar and insulin levels to rise, placing us at high risk for insulin resistance and Alzheimer’s Disease. Our bodies have evolved to handle whole food sources of carbohydrates like apples and sweet potatoes, but they simply aren’t equipped to cope with modern refined carbohydrates like flour and sugar. Simply put, refined carbohydrates cause brain damage.

You can’t do anything about your genes or how old you are—but you can certainly change how you eat. It's not about eating less fat, less meat, more fiber, or more fruits and vegetables. Changing the amount and type of carbohydrate you eat is where the money's at.

Three steps you can take right now to minimize your risk for Alzheimer’s Disease

1. Find out how insulin resistant you are. Your health care provider can estimate where you are on the insulin resistance spectrum using simple blood tests such as glucose, insulin, triglyceride and HDL cholesterol levels, in combination with other information such as waist measurement and blood pressure. In my article How to Diagnose, Prevent and Treat Insulin Resistance, I include a downloadable PDF of tests with healthy target ranges for you to discuss with your health care provider, and a simple formula you can use to calculate your own insulin resistance.

Source: RaviKrishnappa/Pixabay

2. Avoid refined carbohydrates like the plague, starting right now. Even if you don’t have insulin resistance yet, you remain at high risk for developing it until you kick refined carbohydrates such as bagels, juice boxes and granola bars to the curb. For clear definitions and a list of refined foods to avoid:http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/refined-carbohydrate-list/  

3. If you have insulin resistance, watch your carbohydrate intake. Unfortunately, people with insulin resistance need to be careful with all carbs, not just the refined ones. Replace most of the carbs on your plate with delicious healthy fats and proteins to protect your insulin signaling system. The infographic below provides key strategies you'll need to normalize blood sugar and insulin levels.

You can wield tremendous power over insulin resistance—and your intellectual future—simply by changing the way you eat. Laboratory tests for insulin resistance respond surprisingly quickly to dietary changes—many people see dramatic improvements in their blood sugar, insulin, and triglyceride levels within just a few weeks.  

If you already have some memory problems and think it’s too late to do anything about it, think again! This 2012 study showed that a low-carbohydrate high-fat diet improved memory in people with “Mild Cognitive Impairment” (Pre-Alzheimer’s Disease) in only six weeks.

Yes, it is difficult to remove refined carbohydrates from the diet—they are addictive, inexpensive, convenient, and delicious—but you can do it. It is primarily your diet, not your DNA, that controls your destiny. You don’t have to be a sitting duck waiting around to see if Alzheimer’s Disease happens to you. Armed with this information, you can be a proactive swimming duck sporting a big beautiful hippocampus who gets to keep every single one of your marbles for the rest of your life.

Originally published in the article "How to Diagnose, Prevent and Treat Insulin Resistance"  athttp://www.diagnosisdiet.com/how-to-diagnose-prevent-and-treat-insulin-r...

Source: Suzi Smith, used with permission

Original article here

Do You Suffer From Election Stress Disorder?

Do You Suffer From Election Stress Disorder?

Politics in the wrong part of the brain

National elections are tough times for those of us with a bi-partisan nature. They’re even worse for therapists who try to help people access the Adult brain under stress. (That’s the prefrontal cortex, which regulates impulses and carries out our more profound and humane cognitive functions.) Staying in the Adult brain consistently is hard enough during non-election years. Under stress, the Toddler brain (emotional, all-or-nothing, “Mine! No!”) hijacks the Adult brain, impairing its ability to take other perspectives, weigh evidence, see nuance, plan for the future, and create value and meaning. The Toddler brain is highly susceptible to emotional contagion; toddlers take on whatever negative emotions are around them, as any parent who has been tense or irritable near one can attest.

It seems that in every election, poles remind us that the public is fed up with negative campaigning and endless, misleading advertising. We're appalled at the costs of election cycles, which doubles that of the Civil War, with a duration that exceeds America’s participation in World War I. The military words, "campaign" and “war chest” aptly describe political contests; the first casualty in war and politics is truth.

The maelstrom of the current election has been personal for me, as my dearest friends are at opposite sides of the political spectrum. My inbox is bombarded by negative points about the policies and characters of both candidates. Passionate arguments that would not, to be kind, pass peer review on their merits are put forth by good and bright people.

I understand that certainty is an emotional, not an intellectual state that requires limiting the amount of information considered. And of course political campaigns are designed to exploit bias rather than expose it. Still, I wonder how candidates can seem entirely certain about enormously complex problems. Well, I shouldn’t wonder. Few endeavors can be more stressful than running for president. Under stress most of us retreat to the Toddler brain, where we fall prey to all-or-nothing thinking and employ the Toddler coping mechanisms of blame, denial, and avoidance.

Part of my election stress disorder may be due to the fact that I'm vastly overworked. National elections jam-pack our boot camps for couples who suffer from resentment, anger, or emotional abuse. Many people download the negativity of their environment and take it out on the closest people to them. A web of emotion connects us all, and did so long before the Internet became its national conduit. Political campaigns set the web of emotion ablaze with negativity.

My great hope is that one day politicians will embrace an inconvenient truth. To make the country stronger, we must be compassionate to the people closest to us, respect the people we encounter, tolerate differences among all people, and allow a little light to spread through the web of emotion. We either send out respect and good will from the Adult brain or download resentment and anger into the Toddler brain.

Original article here

Co-Surviving Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) happens when a bump, blow, jolt, or other head injury causes damage to the brain. Every year, millions of people in the U.S. suffer brain injuries. More than half are bad enough that people must go to the hospital. The worst injuries can lead to permanent brain damage or death. Half of all TBIs are from motor vehicle accidents. Military personnel in combat zones are also at risk.

Join us for the 3-part series of looking at TBI in America. We will focus on sports related, military related and general causes of TBI and what you as a family member can do to co-survive this injury.

Listen in here...