Mirror Neurons and Incidental Learning

Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran created this Ted Talk to discuss mirror neurons. Mirror neuron’s role in the brain was recently discovered and research about the function of mirror neurons continues. As Dr. Ramachandran mentions in his talk, he believes mirror neuron use is one of the foundations of human interactions and cultural growth.

Mirror neurons, activated by visual observation, allow us to imitate and practice observed actions and to take the perspective of another person as they operate in the world. I couldn’t help but think of mirror neurons in the context of CVI and visual impairments.

For children with CVI, that lack of essential visual access would make mirror neurons function impossible and this must impact the development of all skills and knowledge, all imitation and the development of all social skills. The role of mirror neurons, it seems, is essentially intertwined with incidental learning and perspective taking, the basis of social skills.

A vast amount of information that a child learns about the world is through this visual incidental learning. If I watch a person eating, I am learning through visual skills alone, how people eat. I know the position for eating, the social skills of eating, and the tools used for eating. My brain, using mirror neurons, is practicing eating long before I ever use a spoon myself. I am exposed to this kind of incidental knowledge all my waking hours from birth and I am learning without being directly instructed.

After watching this Ted Talk, ask yourself these questions:

• Does this not support the need for careful evaluation of what children with CVI really understand and how they understand it?
• Does this not caution us to think about why children with CVI might struggle with imitation and pretend play? (and caution us to be careful to never use this imitation and pretend play criteria for cognitive assessment)
• Does this not justify all direct instruction to students with CVI?
• Does this not justify the repeated need to practice all skills directly taught?
• Does this not justify the Expanded Core Curriculum for students with CVI?
• Does this not justify a TVI who understands visual inaccessibility on a child’s educational team?

https://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_the_neurons_that_shaped_civilization?referrer=playlist-how_your_brain_constructs_real

How Often to Assess Learners with CVI?

It has always been best practice in our field of visual impairment to assess children with any visual impairment at least yearly if they have a possibility of changing visual skills.

For kids with ocular impairments (degenerative conditions, damage to the eye or surgeries), sadly this change is usually a reduction in vision. You need the assessment to make sure the materials and methods match the current visual skills to ensure that learning has the optimal visual access.

For kids with CVI, the possibility of visual improvement changes warrant an assessment yearly so the materials and methods match the current visual skill. Waiting for the typical three year re-evaluations might miss a positive vision changes and materials and methods might not match the new visual skills.

Brain Plasticity

I just attended a meeting where the school psychologist stated “This child’s skills have plateaued”. Such old and erroneous information! Even with the scientific evident to the contrary, some professional continue to propagate this brain science myth. This is a dangerous myth. It sets a mindset that lowers a team’s expectations for a child’s continued learning across all skills.

In schools, there continues to be a misconception that brain plasticity is fixed to ages between 0 and 3 years old. While it seems true that the young brain learns and reassigns best, this does not mean that after age three, we do not have the expectation for improvements for all skills including visual skills. The brain has great plasticity all through life so we must expect improvements or we will most certainly not get them! We must continue to provide each child with the needed supports. Of course, these needs are determined after careful assessment using the correct tools that measures where and how the child is functioning. For a child with CVI, the correct assessment for functional vision is based on the well known visual behaviors of this brain based visual impairment.

Knowing where and how a child is functioning is the only way to provide first: optimal visual access and second: build visual skills. We move from current functioning, determine the next steps and create goals and objective for improvement.

Here are some resources that I shared with that psychologist, parents and the team:

Psychology Today: Brain Plasticity in Older Adults https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/iage/201304/brain-plasticity-in-older-adults

Dr. Lofti Merabet Looking Inside the Adaptive Brain
https://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?Live=16959&bhcp=1

Youtube Lecture: Recovered Sight: Michael May

Understanding Blindness and the Brain (Brian Wandell, Stanford University)

I think you might find this one fascinating! Michael May lost vision as a child and regained it in his 40s. As he regains sight, there are so many CVI characteristics he experiences!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVgfC_FV2hI

From Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience

My head is once again spinning after the March 7th Perkins School for the Blind CVI conference.  Fantastic new research about CVI is being conducted by Dr. Roman-Lantzy and Dr. Lofti Merabet.  How does it related to my work with children? I need to understand as much as I can about the “why” children present with certain behaviors.

“New publication from the lab showing mapping of brain anatomy and visual activity in response to visual field deficits in CVI”.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/…/10.3…/fnsys.2016.00013/full

JOURNAL.FRONTIERSIN.ORG

 

 

 

The Brain: David Eagleman

We should increase out understanding of the brain as we think about children with CVI. The more we know, the more critically we can evaluate theories and interventions. We can understand the medical information we receive in reports. We can begin to understand the latest brain research and it is sure changing quickly!  Even texts and articles about the brain from 5 years ago may contain disproved information.

David Eagleman explores the brain in this new series “The Brain”. This looks like a wonderful series from PBS (Public Broadcasting Station).

http://video.pbs.org/program/brain-david-eagleman/

Here is his website: http://www.pbs.org/the-brain-with-david-eagleman/home/

I just ordered his new book The Brain. I’ll let you know what I find out about the visual system!

Interesting Webinar

I found this lecture so interesting!  It is one hour long but worth the time.

Looking Inside the Adaptive Brain of the Blind

Dr. Merabet speaks at the National Institutes of Health in Washington DC about the team’s work on plasticity, ocular blindness, and CVI. As usual I have more questions!

http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?Live=16959&bhcp=1

 

Building Success at Any Age

A 13 year old student I have worked with for years continues to build more and more visual skills every day. I’m so proud of her! She works so hard!

Improvements are always possible and should be expected no matter what age. We now know the plasticity of the brain lasts a lifetime.

When I met her at age 9 months, she was truly a blind child. She located no visual information and stared at light consistently. Now her visual attention is improved and with that she has begun to recognize some familiar items. I expect more and more improvement with careful assessment, well-matched environmental considerations and consistently used educational programming. The key to her success has been parent understanding of CVI and parent use of CVI educational programming. There would be no improvements without the adult’s expectation of improvement!