Brain: Lectures address attention and reading
Continued from page 1
letters, numbers and symbols, and
asked them to monitor the changes in
all three.
While all participants were aware
of what they were supposed to be do
ing, some were able to complete the
task better than others. People who
performed well tended to be people
who also did well on intelligence
tests based on problem solving.
“Almost everyone with an IQ be
low 100 is failing almost all of the tri
als,” Duncan said.
This correlation, where people
who perform well on one test tend to
perform well on other tests, is called
Spearman’s g. But Spearman’s g does
not explain what intelligence is.
“Our everyday concepts like intelli
gence don’t have a very definite defi
nition,” Duncan said, although he re
ferred to research conducted by
University psychology professor
emeritus Michael Posner, which
found that children who take atten
tion training perform better on prob
lem-solving-based intelligence tests.
About 60 people, including faculty,
graduate students and undergraduate
students, primarily from the psychol
ogy and computer science depart
ments, attended Duncan’s lecture.
Duncan worked at the University
in Posner’s laboratory as a post-doc
toral fellow from 1976 to 1978.
Another psychology lecture oc
curred Saturday morning, and the
weekend continued with a live tele
cast in the Lillis Business Complex
from the Oregon Health Sciences Uni
versity in Portland.
Guinevere Eden, director of
Georgetown University’s Center for
the Study of Learning, spoke about
the brain processes associated with
dyslexia, a condition where people
have difficulty reading and recogniz
ing words.
Eden said that as people become
more experienced at reading, their
parietal lobes — regions of the brain
that are involved in processing touch
and taste as well as language — be
come more involved in the process.
According to functional magnetic
resonance imaging scans, which
measure brain activity by monitoring
blood flow to various parts of the
brain, people with dyslexia have less
activity in their parietal lobes when
they read than other people.
Dyslexia can now be identified ear
ly in life, using both behavioral evi
dence and brain scans, and tech
niques for helping people with
dyslexia improve their reading skills
have been developed.
UJ
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“There’s really no excuse for not
identifying these children early on
and beginning the intervention,”
Eden said. “The cost if you wait
is enormous. ”
Psychology and neuroscience pro
fessor Helen Neville, who is on
BBMI’s executive committee, said af
ter the lecture that BBMI offers many
public lectures throughout the year,
covering topics such as brain imag
ing, education and the role of genes
in brain function.
Some of these lectures are specifical
ly designed for parents and educators
to teach them ways to facilitate healthy
development of children’s brains.
“BBMI is all about studying the
mind and brain from many different
perspectives,” Neville said.
Contact the business, science
and technology reporter at
esylwester@dailyemerald.com
IN BRIEF
Higher education board
approves health center
KLAMATH FALLS — The Oregon
Board of Higher Education approved
a plan to build a $10 million health
care professional training center at
the Oregon Institute of Technology.
School officials want to build a
40,000-square-foot facility to meet in
creasing student demands for health
care training.
OIT President Martha Anne Dow
told the board Friday that university
facilities have reached or exceeded
capacity, forcing the school to turn
away 238 potential health care
students in 2002. Last year, OIT had
to reject 150 qualified medical
imaging students.
The number of OIT students in
professional health care programs in
creased from 728 in 2002 to 1,167
this fall. State employment figures in
dicate another 48,000 new health
care workers will be needed by 2012.
—The Associated Press
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