Does Brain Training Work?

                        To begin to understand how brain training works, we first need to understand where the ideas developed.  Let’s say that we have a family member who was involved in an accident.  As a result of that accident, he/she no longer remembers how to read.   Before the accident he/she was a college professor and reading is not just important part of their life, but imperative to their livelihood. 

So, once the physical wounds have healed, your family begins the arduous task of re-teaching the person to read.  Your employ occupational therapists, physical therapists, speech and language therapists.  You research and begin to find ways to help with the task.  It is a long and tedious process, made all that much more maddening because you don’t totally understand how a person who could once read at a higher level than you could, can’t tell an ‘f’ from a ‘j’. 

In their mind, what has happened is that the initial path; the easiest one for learning to read has sustained permanent damage.  The person however, knows that they want to learn to read and is trying very hard with all the people to learn to read.  Everyone is dedicated to the task at hand, including the brain of the person who was injured.  Eventually, over time and with much patience, a new path is forged and the skill of reading is slowly re-learned.  In the brain, the damaged area is not being repaired, but a new path is being forged.  Slowly and with much patience, that new path will gain strength and the task will become easier. 

Now, let’s look at the mind of a person who is learning disabled.  We have the same kind of problem.  For someone with auditory processing struggles, the ears work and the brain works, but the connection between the two gets jumbled.  When we employ brain training tactics, we are attempting to give the auditory cues a new path to follow.  The same tactics will not work for every person.  Anyone who says, this always works, makes me nervous.  The success of any program depends on the commitment of the learner and the wiring of the individuals’ mind.