3P25 Deletion Syndrome.

3P25 Deletion Syndrome. - Today we welcomed back a two year old little girl for her second
assessment. She has an exceptionally rare genetic disorder known as 3p25 deletion syndrome. This is so rare that since the first person was reported in the medical literature in 1978, only around 50 people with a 3p25 deletion involving no other chromosome(s) have been described in the medical literature. Today after 10 months on the Snowdrop programme she had made some very significant developmental gains. Her visual ability has moved from the 4 month level to the 12 month level. Her auditory development has moved from the 8 month level to the 18 month level. Gross motor skills have improved from not even sitting, to standing against furniture, - she is well on the way to developing a standing balance. Language has moved from the 7 month level of babbling, to the 14 month level of possessing two words of speech, - 'dada' and 'go.' Socialisation has moved from the 8 month level to the 18 month level. It just shows that genetic expression can be fought against. Well done to mum and dad who have brought about this dramatic change!

HIE Grade 3.

Perinatal asphyxia, more appropriately known as hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), is characterised by clinical and laboratory evidence of acute or subacute brain injury due to asphyxia. The primary causes of this condition are systemic hypoxemia and/or reduced cerebral blood flow (CBF).  At Snowdrop we see many children who have suffered HIE.  It is graded in rank of severity, grade 3 being the most severe.

Today we welcomed back a 23 month old little girl for her 5th assessment. She had suffered an HIE grade 3, which is severe and I first saw her when she was just 6 weeks old. Since that time, she has come along wonderfully and it was great to see her walk into Snowdrop today for the first time. She is now well ahead of her age level in visual cognition and auditory cognition, (30 months and 40 months respectively), her language is age appropriate in that she is now putting two words together in what is known as 'telegraphic speech' and her social development is also age appropriate. The only problems which remain are use of the left hand, which is coming along nicely and refinement of her walking, which as she has only been walking for a few weeks, may come naturally and will in any case continue to improve as we improve tactile performance in the left side limbs. Well done folks, I don't need to see you for a year! (we will keep in touch though in the meantime).

If you need to contact Snowdrop, you can do so at info@snowdrop.cc

1p36 Deletion Syndrome

1p36 deletion syndrome affects between 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 10,000 children.  It is characterised by severe intellectual impairment, lack of language development, temper tantrums and other behavioural issues.  There can be structural abnormalities in the brain which also cause low muscle tone and difficulties in swallowing. Children can take a long time in rolling over, sitting, etc The only treatments which have been widely used are physiotherapy and music therapy, which have had limited impact.  

6 months ago I was delighted to welcome a 12 month old little girl with 1p36 deletion onto the Snowdrop programme where we try to harness the inherent plasticity of the brain in order to stimulate development.  Today the little girl in question attended with her parents for her first reassessment.  we saw some promising improvements. She is now rolling and sitting, her visual performance was improved and she is now listening to the voices around her, which gives her a chance to begin decoding language. She also now recognises her own name. Hand function is also showing good improvement with the development of a pincer grip and we also have gains in social development.  As I say, children with this disorder usually have feeding and drinking problems due to their difficulties with swallowing, but we seem to have had a positive effect here with this little one eating and drinking with impunity.

All this in the face of a genetic expression which is acting to prevent development. If we can do this in 6 months of programme, imagine what we can achieve in the long term!

Meningitis and Hydrocephalus.

Today's assessment was on of the most amazing we have hosted.  It was with a 20 month old little boy and his family. He has been on the programme for 16 months and this was his fourth assessment. 

His background is a complex one.  In his Mum's own words in her first email to me.

"My identical twin boys were born 8/3/2016, 12 weeks early. ------ had fluid on the brain, a brain bleed on both sides, ventriculitis, and both twins contracted ecoli bacterial meningitis at 8 days old. ------- nearly died, he was having bad seizures, so much that his body was jerking off the bed (------- wasn't as sick) we were told there would be long term effects of this meningitis as he was so sick.

Unfortunately ------ got meningitis another TWO times. He's had an MRI which showed extensive brain damage and unfortunately has had to have a shunt fitted this week as the third bout of meningitis finally cleared up and he was well enough for surgery. The hydrocephalus has been very severe and neurosurgeon mentioned more brain damage since the last MRI.

I got talking to a mum of a little baby called ------- from York last night, we are at Leeds hospital together. She mentioned Snowdrop and I've been reading your website.
------- still not been discharged from hospital and yesterday started twitching down one side of his body again which he always did everytime he had meningitis, but part of me wonders if it's cerebral palsy or from the brain damage. We are waiting for neurology to come review him. But the hospital aren't being very open about his brain damage as I understand they can't say how it's going to effect him, but there is something clearly wrong. We don't even know if he can see or hear. He just states vacantly. The hospital describe him as a very angry as unsettled baby, he settled yesterday when I put his twin in his cot with him and actually looked directly at him.

We don't think we would be able to get to Devon having twins and a four year old. But we are very interested in the snowdrop programme for ------. I just wondered if you could advise me as to what to do next?

I know ------- is a very complex case but that's the basics of his history in his short 13 week life so far!"
In short, he was in a sorry state with a prognosis which was savage, the little one was going nowhere. Today, after 16 months on the programme, he walked into the assessment room and is at age level in every area of development. In fact today I graduated him from the programme, - he no longer really needs it! Of course we will keep a 'monitoring eye' on his progress, just in case an issue raises it's head, but I'm sure it won't. Not a bad start to the week! Well done to mum, dad, big sister and twin brother, - together we rescued him!

Learning with Music Helps Boost Changes in Brain Structure.

I have understood the importance of music for some time now, how it can influence the plasticity of the brain and how in particular it can influence the development of spoken language.  This is why there is a musical element to all Snowdrop Programmes, whether that be through offering clients access to the 'EASE' programme, the 'Listening Programme,' or whether it is using music to calm a child.  Now we have evidence that we can use music to stimulate better motor performance.  This will be immediately implemented and incorporated into our programmes.  With thanks to domain-b.com.  Learning with Music Helps Boost Changes in Brain Structure 

How Repetition Changes the Structure of the Brain.

The more we repeat something, the better we get at it; this much is uncontroversial.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth examining. The connection between repeating an action or a skill and then improving because of that repetition is a concept that is so natural and intuitive, so well accepted as common knowledge, that we often fail to appreciate the fascinating mechanics behind the process of skill acquisition.  It follows the old adage, 'practice makes perfect!'

On the most basic level, learning a new skill or improving a skill involves changes in the brain.  There are a few different ways that our brains adapt to picking up new skills and changing environmental conditions.  The first involves a rewiring of the networks of neurons in the brain.  Each skill or action that a child performs involves the activation of neural pathways.  In Norman Doidge’s book on neuroplasticity, The Brain That Changes Itself, Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone has a beautiful little analogy for the way that these pathways relate to skilled performance (Page 209):

"The plastic brain is like a snowy hill in winter.  Aspects of that hill–the slope, the rocks, the consistency of the snow–are, like our genes, a given.  When we slide down on a sled, we can steer it and will end up at the bottom of the hill by following a path determined both by how we steer and the characteristics of the hill.  Where exactly we will end up is hard to predict because there are so many factors in play." “But,” Pascual-Leone says, “what will definitely happen the second time you take the slope down is that you will more likely than not find yourself somewhere or another that is related to the path you took the first time.  It won’t be exactly that path, but it will be closer to that one than any other.  And if you spend your entire afternoon sledding down, walking up, sledding down, at the end you will have some paths that have been used a lot, some that have been used very little.”

Every action we perform, every new skill we pick up, involves beating down and refining a kind of neural trail.  We are making real changes in the brain.  And our brains are remarkably efficient to change in response to training.  In one study, video game players who played the dark, fast-moving action-based game Call of Duty for 9 weeks were not only better at the game, but were able to see significantly more shades of gray, post-training, than a group who played a simulation strategy game that did not exercise those skills.

Over a longer time span, it is also possible to see significant structural changes in the brain.  For example, the brain area associated with motor control of the right index finger in blind subjects who are braille readers has been found to be significantly larger than that of sighted individuals.  Similarly, a famous study of london cabbies, famous for their ability to navigate the twisting streets of the city, found that they had greater brain volume in the hippocampus, a structure heavily involved in both memory and spatial navigation, than bus drivers who followed a predefined route every day.

With respect to the brains of children who have developmental disabilities, the brain injuries or abnormalities they suffer might slow that response to training down a little, but the response is still possible.  

Evidence for neuroplasticity abounds, - from the structural differences which have been found between experienced athletes and novices, through to the Chinese study of expert divers which found increased gray matter volume in brain areas associated with skilled motor control.  Along the same lines, an Australian study of skilled racket-sport players found that brain areas associated with the racket arm were larger than in a matched group of non-athletes.  The evidence is irrefutable! 

The overarching theme here is that the brain is malleable–it changes with training.  It is an interesting concept to keep in mind, especially with respect to brain injured children and it is the overarching principle of the Snowdrop programme.  

It’s easy and natural to think about training in terms of muscles, the body and physical skills.  But every new skill that a child learns is accompanied also by neural changes that may be harder to see, but are equally important.

If you would like more information about the Snowdrop programme, go to our website at http://www.snowdrop.cc or email us at andrew@snowdrop.cc


Doidge, N.  The Brain that Changes itself.  Viking Press.  2007

Zuo, Y. et al. (2012). Spine tuning. Finding physical evidence of how practice rewires the brain. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/04/16/spine-tuning-finding-physical-evidence-of-how-practice-rewires-the-brain/

What is Brain Plasticity?

Brain plasticity, also known as neuroplasticity, is a term that refers to the brain's ability to change and adapt as a result of experience.  In the case of brain injured children on the Snowdrop programme, that experience comes through the repetition of the developmental activities within the child's programme. 

Up until the 1960s, researchers believed that changes in the brain could only take place during infancy and childhood. By early adulthood, it was believed that the brain's physical structure was permanent. Modern research has demonstrated that the brain continues to create new neural pathways and alter existing ones in order to adapt to new experiences, learn new information and create new memories.

Psychologist William James suggested that the brain was perhaps not as unchanging as previously believed way back in 1890. In his book The Principles of Psychology, he wrote, "Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity." However, this idea went largely ignored for many years.  It is still not accepted and largely ignored by the medical community in the UK who adopt an attitude of "once a brain is injured, there is nothing which can be done," - consigning children to the 'scrapheap' of life whilst refusing to accept the evidence of plasticity and what that could mean for the child and his / her family in terms of recovery of function.  This is where the Snowdrop programme comes in, - stimulating plasticity and consequently directing the child down the correct developmental pathway. 

In the 1920s, researcher Karl Lashley provided evidence of changes in the neural pathways of rhesus monkeys. By the 1960s, researchers began to explore cases in which older adults who had suffered massive strokes were able to regain functioning, demonstrating that the brain was much more malleable than previously believed. Modern researchers have also found evidence that the brain is able to rewire itself following damage.

How Does Brain Plasticity Work?

The human brain is composed of approximately 100 billion neurons. Early researchers believed that neurogenesis, or the creation of new neurons, stopped shortly after birth. Today, it is understood that the brain possesses the remarkable capacity to reorganize pathways, create new connections and, in some cases, even create new neurons in structures such as the hippocampus.

The first few years of a child's life are a time of rapid brain growth. At birth, every neuron in the cerebral cortex has an estimated 2,500 synapses; by age of three, this number has grown to 10,000 synapses per neuron.

The average adult, however, has about half that number of synapses. Why? Because as we gain new experiences, some connections are strengthened while others are eliminated. This process is known as synaptic pruning. Neurons that are used frequently develop stronger connections and those that are rarely or never used eventually die. - 'Used frequently,' that is a key term - This is why the repetitive nature of the programme is important, so that synaptic connections associated with the developmental functions we are trying to stimulate are strengthened.  By developing new connections and pruning away weak ones in this way, the brain is able to adapt to the changing environment, - in the case of our children, the developmental environment provided by the programme.

Anyone wanting to learn more about the Snowdrop programme should email andrew@snowdrop.cc

Brain Plasticity in Action, (on a trampoline)!

This young man is just 19 months old.   When he was 6 weeks of age he suffered a massive stroke which destroyed the left side of his brain.  His doctors told his mum that as a consequence he would never be able to use his right side limbs, which meant he would never crawl, never walk, and because language functions are situated in the left hemisphere, he would never understand or produce spoken language.  His mum refused to accept this and after many months of despair, she found Snowdrop via an internet search.  We instituted a programme of neuro-developmental stimulation, which he has been following for just 1 year.  The results have been astonishing and he did crawl, he does walk, (and run) and he most certainly does talk!  Here we see him coordinating both legs in order to enjoy the trampoline.  This young man is proof positive that not only can we stimulate brain plasticity, we can successfully direct it down a developmental pathway and thus restore the functions of children who have suffered brain injury.

 is trampolining using both legs in coordinated style! Go Max!

The link between music and language development.

This is the reason why exposure to music is a primary factor within the Snowdrop programme for brain injured children.  With thanks to 'Medical News Today.'

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Contrary to the prevailing theories that music and language are cognitively separate or that music is a byproduct of language, theorists at Rice University's Shepherd School of Music and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) advocate that music underlies the ability to acquire language. 

"Spoken language is a special type of music," said Anthony Brandt, co-author of a theory paper published online this month in the journal Frontiers in Cognitive Auditory Neuroscience. "Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence, and music is often treated as being dependent on or derived from language. But from a developmental perspective, we argue that music comes first and language arises from music." 

Brandt, associate professor of composition and theory at the Shepherd School, co-authored the paper with Shepherd School graduate student Molly Gebrian and L. Robert Slevc, UMCP assistant professor of psychology and director of the Language and Music Cognition Lab. 

"Infants listen first to sounds of language and only later to its meaning," Brandt said. He noted that newborns' extensive abilities in different aspects of speech perception depend on the discrimination of the sounds of language - "the most musical aspects of speech." 

The paper cites various studies that show what the newborn brain is capable of, such as the ability to distinguish the phonemes, or basic distinctive units of speech sound, and such attributes as pitch, rhythm and timbre. 

The authors define music as "creative play with sound." They said the term "music" implies an attention to the acoustic features of sound irrespective of any referential function. As adults, people focus primarily on the meaning of speech. But babies begin by hearing language as "an intentional and often repetitive vocal performance," Brandt said. "They listen to it not only for its emotional content but also for its rhythmic and phonemic patterns and consistencies. The meaning of words comes later." 

Brandt and his co-authors challenge the prevailing view that music cognition matures more slowly than language cognition and is more difficult. "We show that music and language develop along similar time lines," he said. 

Infants initially don't distinguish well between their native language and all the languages of the world, Brandt said. Throughout the first year of life, they gradually hone in on their native language. Similarly, infants initially don't distinguish well between their native musical traditions and those of other cultures; they start to hone in on their own musical culture at the same time that they hone in on their native language, he said. 

The paper explores many connections between listening to speech and music. For example, recognizing the sound of different consonants requires rapid processing in the temporal lobe of the brain. Similarly, recognizing the timbre of different instruments requires temporal processing at the same speed - a feature of musical hearing that has often been overlooked, Brandt said. 

"You can't distinguish between a piano and a trumpet if you can't process what you're hearing at the same speed that you listen for the difference between 'ba' and 'da,'" he said. "In this and many other ways, listening to music and speech overlap." The authors argue that from a musical perspective, speech is a concert of phonemes and syllables. 

"While music and language may be cognitively and neurally distinct in adults, we suggest that language is simply a subset of music from a child's view," Brandt said. "We conclude that music merits a central place in our understanding of human development." 

Brandt said more research on this topic might lead to a better understanding of why music therapy is helpful for people with reading and speech disorders. People with dyslexia often have problems with the performance of musical rhythm. "A lot of people with language deficits also have musical deficits," Brandt said. 

More research could also shed light on rehabilitation for people who have suffered a stroke. "Music helps them reacquire language, because that may be how they acquired language in the first place," Brandt said. 

Green tea and it's effects upon neurogenesis.

With thanks to 'Medical News Today. This looks interesting!   The chemical within green tea, (EGCG), seems to affect neurogenesis, (The production of new brain cells during life, - which only occurs in the hippocampus, - the part of the brain responsible for learning and part of memory formation). However, the evidence suggests that EGCG can turn these new cells to various uses in the brain when the researchers discovered that



"ECGC helps to promote the making of neural progenitor cells, which are similar to stem cells which can turn into many different kinds of cells."

This has immediate practical implications for the treatment of brain injured children and will be incorporated into the Snowdrop programme with immediate effect. (We shall be recommending caffeine free green tea of course).

Green Tea Improves Memory and Spatial Awareness.

Study Shows the Deaf Brain Processes Touch Differently

This study again highlights the brains' adaptability. It demonstrates not only the 'rewiring' phenomenon we see in our children as a result of their participation in the Snowdrop programme, but the fact that areas of the brain previously thought to be specialised for specific functions can adapt and take on other functions.

http://neurosciencenews.com/study-shows-the-deaf-brain-processes-touch-differently/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+neuroscience-rss-feeds-neuroscience-news+%28Neuroscience+News+Updates%29

The Brains' of Children with Autism are Wired Differently.

Research into how the brain is connected in a different way in children with autism.  What this study doesn't tell you is that 'wiring patterns' in the brain can be changed.  The brain responds mainly to two things, - genetic instruction, (faulty genetic instruction can cause a faulty wiring pattern) and the stimuli it receives from the environment.  The environment is by far the most powerful force and the stimulation from it can be manipulated so as to encourage the brain to change.  This is what the Snowdrop programme is all about.
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A research team led by Elizabeth Aylward, a University of Washington professor of radiology, report that brains of adults with autism are “wired” differently from people without the disorder. The researchers, who are affiliated with the University of Washington’s Autism Center, also found that this abnormal connection pattern may be the cause of the social impairments characteristic of autism in children.

The research team used functional magnetic resonance imaging in the study, which also revealed that the subjects with the most severe social impairment showed the most abnormal pattern of activity of connectivity in the brain regions that process faces. One of the earliest characteristics to emerge in autistic children is a deficit in face processing, and this study is the first to examine how the brain processes information about faces.

Lead author Natalia Kleinhans states that "This study shows that these brain regions are failing to work together efficiently" and that the “work seems to indicate that the brain pathways of people with autism are not completely disconnected, but they are not as strong as in people without autism."

The study’s participants were 19 high-functioning autistic adults from ages 18 to 44 with IQs of at least 85 and 21 age- and intelligence-matched typically developed adults. Within the autism spectrum disorder group were 8 individuals diagnosed with autism, 9 diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, and 2 with an otherwise non-specified pervasive developmental disorder. Levels of social impairment were drawn from clinical observations and diagnoses.

Participants were shown 4 series of 12 pictures of faces and a similar series of pictures of houses, all while having their brains scanned. The pictures were viewed for 3 seconds, and occasionally they were repeated. The participants were instructed to press a button when a picture was repeated.

Because this was a basic task, the two groups’ performances revealed no difference in performance, but, according to co-author Todd Richards, “Differences might have shown up if they had been asked to do something more complicated."

While there was no difference in performance, the two groups exhibited different patterns of brain activity. The typically developing adults showed significantly more connectivity between the area of the brain involved in face identification and two other areas of the brain than did the autism group.

Those autistic participants with the largest social impairment demonstrated the lowest level of connectivity between the areas of the brain, leading the authors to conclude that "This study shows that the brains of people with autism are not working as cohesively as those of people without autism when they are looking at faces and processing information about them."

Does this research mean that children with autism need to be 'stuck' with this connectivity problem? This is not what I am finding. We know that the brain has qualities of plasticity, - that it is capable of re-organising it's structure and functioning through environmental stimulation. We know that this plasticity is achieved through 'sprouting' - that is the forming of new synaptic connections through dendritic growth in response to this environmental stimulation. As I said at the beginning of this post, this means that the faulty wiring pattern which the brains of children with autism adopts can be changed. The question is, how do we do this? At Snowdrop, I do this by providing the child with an enriched developmental environment which provides stimulation appropriate to the child's sensory and cognitive needs. In the particular instance of poor face recognition processing, we can utilise specialised techniques to enhance the abilities of children to process information concerning faces. Very often this leads to greater eye - contact and better facial regard and the development of mutual attention. As these abilities underpin both language and social development, we can also see improvements in these areas.

UCLA Study Demonstrates the Brain's Ability to Reorganise.

Thanks to 'Scienceblog' for this report, which again clearly demonstrates just how plastic the brain actually is. It is this inherent plasticity that Snowdrop aims to direct in our programmes of rehabilitation for brain injured children.

Visually impaired people appear to be fearless, navigating busy sidewalks and crosswalks, safely finding their way using nothing more than a cane as a guide. The reason they can do this, researchers suggest, is that in at least some circumstances, blindness can heighten other senses, helping individuals adapt.

Now scientists from the UCLA Department of Neurology have confirmed that blindness causes structural changes in the brain, indicating that the brain may reorganize itself functionally in order to adapt to a loss in sensory input.

Reporting in the January issue of the journal NeuroImage (currently online), Natasha Leporé, a postgraduate researcher at UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues found that visual regions of the brain were smaller in volume in blind individuals than in sighted ones. However, for non-visual areas, the trend was reversed -- they grew larger in the blind. This, the researchers say, suggests that the brains of blind individuals are compensating for the reduced volume in areas normally devoted to vision.

"This study shows the exceptional plasticity of the brain and its ability to reorganize itself after a major input -- in this case, vision -- is lost," said Leporé. "In other words, it appears the brain will attempt to compensate for the fact that a person can no longer see, and this is particularly true for those who are blind since early infancy, a developmental period in which the brain is much more plastic and modifiable than it is in adulthood."

Researchers used an extremely sensitive type of brain imaging called tensor-based morphometry, which can detect very subtle changes in brain volume, to examine the brains of three different groups: those who lost their sight before the age of 5; those who lost their sight after 14; and a control group of sighted individuals. Comparing the two groups of blind individuals, the researchers found that loss and gain of brain matter depended heavily on when the blindness occurred.

Only the early-blind group differed significantly from the control group in an area of the brain's corpus callosum that aids in the transmission of visual information between the two hemispheres of the brain. The researchers suggest this may be because of the reduced amount of myelination in the absence of visual input. Myelin, the fatty sheaf that surrounds nerves and allows for fast communication, develops rapidly in the very young. When the onset of blindness occurs in adolescence or later, the growth of myelin is already relatively complete, so the structure of the corpus callosum may not be strongly influenced by the loss of visual input.

In both blind groups, however, the researchers found significant enlargement in areas of the brain not responsible for vision. For example, the frontal lobes, which are involved with, among other things, working memory, were found to be abnormally enlarged, perhaps offering an anatomical foundation for some of blind individuals' enhanced skills.

Previous studies have found that when walking down a corridor with windows, the blind are adept at detecting the windows' presence because they can feel subtle changes in temperature and distinguish between the auditory echoes caused by walls and windows.

Leporé noted that scientists and others have long been curious about whether or not blind individuals compensated for their lack of vision by developing greater abilities in their remaining senses. For example, the 18th-century French philosopher Denis Diderot wrote of his amazement with some of the abilities shown by blind individuals, in particular a blind mathematician who could distinguish real from fake coins just by touching them.

But it wasn't until the early 1990s that the suspicions of science began to be confirmed with the development of neuroimaging tools.

"That allowed researchers to probe inside the brain in a non-invasive manner, yielding insights into the impressive adaptive capacity of the brain to reorganize itself following injury or sensory deprivation," Leporé said.

Other authors included Caroline Brun, Yi-Yu Chou, Agatha D. Lee, Sarah K. Madsen, Arthur W. Toga and Paul M. Thompson, all of UCLA, and Franco Leporé, Madeleine Fortin, Frédéric Gougoux, Maryse Lassonde and Patrice Voss, of the University of Montreal.

This study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canada Research Chairs Program, the National Institute on Aging, the National Library of Medicine, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the National Center for Research Resources, the National Institute for Child Health and Development, and a grant from the National Institutes of Health.
The researchers report no conflicts of interest.

The UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, which seeks to improve understanding of the brain in health and disease, is a leader in the development of advanced computational algorithms and scientific approaches for the comprehensive and quantitative mapping of brain structure and function. The laboratory is part of the UCLA Department of Neurology, which encompasses more than a dozen research, clinical and teaching programs. The department has ranked No. 1 among its peers nationwide in National Institutes of Health funding for the last seven years

How Repetition Changes the Structure of the Brain.

The more we repeat something, the better we get at it; this much is uncontroversial.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth examining. The connection between repeating an action or a skill and then improving because of that repetition is a concept that is so natural and intuitive, so well accepted as common knowledge, that we often fail to appreciate the fascinating mechanics behind the process of skill acquisition.  It follows the old adage, 'practice makes perfect!'

On the most basic level, learning a new skill or improving a skill involves changes in the brain.  There are a few different ways that our brains adapt to picking up new skills and changing environmental conditions.  The first involves a rewiring of the networks of neurons in the brain.  Each skill or action that a child performs involves the activation of neural pathways.  In Norman Doidge’s book on neuroplasticity, The Brain That Changes Itself, Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone has a beautiful little analogy for the way that these pathways relate to skilled performance (Page 209):

"The plastic brain is like a snowy hill in winter.  Aspects of that hill–the slope, the rocks, the consistency of the snow–are, like our genes, a given.  When we slide down on a sled, we can steer it and will end up at the bottom of the hill by following a path determined both by how we steer and the characteristics of the hill.  Where exactly we will end up is hard to predict because there are so many factors in play." “But,” Pascual-Leone says, “what will definitely happen the second time you take the slope down is that you will more likely than not find yourself somewhere or another that is related to the path you took the first time.  It won’t be exactly that path, but it will be closer to that one than any other.  And if you spend your entire afternoon sledding down, walking up, sledding down, at the end you will have some paths that have been used a lot, some that have been used very little.”

Every action we perform, every new skill we pick up, involves beating down and refining a kind of neural trail.  We are making real changes in the brain.  And our brains are remarkably efficient to change in response to training.  In one study, video game players who played the dark, fast-moving action-based game Call of Duty for 9 weeks were not only better at the game, but were able to see significantly more shades of gray, post-training, than a group who played a simulation strategy game that did not exercise those skills.

Over a longer time span, it is also possible to see significant structural changes in the brain.  For example, the brain area associated with motor control of the right index finger in blind subjects who are braille readers has been found to be significantly larger than that of sighted individuals.  Similarly, a famous study of london cabbies, famous for their ability to navigate the twisting streets of the city, found that they had greater brain volume in the hippocampus, a structure heavily involved in both memory and spatial navigation, than bus drivers who followed a predefined route every day.

With respect to the brains of children who have developmental disabilities, the brain injuries or abnormalities they suffer might slow that response to training down a little, but the response is still possible.  

Evidence for neuroplasticity abounds, - from the structural differences which have been found between experienced athletes and novices, through to the Chinese study of expert divers which found increased gray matter volume in brain areas associated with skilled motor control.  Along the same lines, an Australian study of skilled racket-sport players found that brain areas associated with the racket arm were larger than in a matched group of non-athletes.  The evidence is irrefutable! 

The overarching theme here is that the brain is malleable–it changes with training.  It is an interesting concept to keep in mind, especially with respect to brain injured children and it is the overarching principle of the Snowdrop programme.  

It’s easy and natural to think about training in terms of muscles, the body and physical skills.  But every new skill that a child learns is accompanied also by neural changes that may be harder to see, but are equally important.

If you would like more information about the Snowdrop programme, just visit our website on http://www.snowdrop.cc  - email us at snowdrop_cdc@btinternet.com or call on 01884 38447