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

Central Focus for CVI: “How Does This Benefit Kids and Families?”

I have the pleasure of working at Perkins School for the Blind as the CVI Program Manager. My supervisor, Ed Bosso, has one central question for me every time we meet:

“How does this benefit kids and families?”

I try to take that question into consideration for everything I do.

• How does this statement benefit kids and families?
• How does this interaction benefit kids and families?
• How does this idea benefit kids and families?
• How does this CVI training benefit kids and families?
• How does this assessment benefit kids and families?
• How does this collaboration benefit kids and families?

There is certainly increasing understanding of CVI since I first learned about it in 2002. Now our task is to stay focused and to use that building energy and building understanding creatively, scientifically and collaboratively to move this field forward in all ways.

To support the medical field, the educational field and research field in understanding CVI, that central question, “How does this benefit kids and families?”, should be the first question we ask ourselves. Absolutely nothing else matters…

Understanding Color in the Brain

I always find it so exciting and encouraging when brain research about the visual system continues to unwrap the great mysteries of the brain. This understanding can only move us forward in understanding CVI and in assessing whether interventions are working. I am deeply interested in why my children behave the way they do. Here is a recent article from Spectrum MIT, a publication from Massachusetts Institute of Technology: http://spectrum.mit.edu/fall-2016/color-decoder.

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

 

 

 

No Diagnosis of CVI?

I am not a doctor and would never assume to be qualified to give a diagnosis of CVI for any child in my care. I do observe children’s visual behavior and suspect cortical/cerebral visual impairment.  I try to steer the families to ophthalmologists that understand CVI and make sure I provide the doctor with detailed observations and assessment results. I do this in the hopes that the diagnosis of CVI will be made. But I can not wait for a diagnosis. I must conduct this assessment of visual factors that greatly influence child’s ability to learn. It is my job as a teacher to students with visual impairments to provide detailed functional vision assessments.

In my functional vision report, here is the language that I use:

“Given the assessed ocular health of XXX’s eyes, the positive history of brain involvement, complex visual developmental history and reduced functional vision for learning and accessing the environment, XXX was educationally assessed (name the tools used). Functional vision observations focused on the these recognized characteristics of brain based visual impairment: This is not meant to serve as a diagnosis, only as educational observations that will lead to increased access to visual learning and to the creation of strategies and environmental supports to build vision use”.

 

Understanding Medical Information

It is important to understand the medical history of all conditions affecting the children you serve.  It deepens your knowledge of symptoms, learning profiles and places behaviors in context.

For children with CVI, increasing your own understanding of the causes of brain based CVI exposes you to information and terminology about the brain structures and function.  You should understand the structures of the brain as well as you know the structures of the eye.  This is where CVI abnormalities and difficulties are located. I want to learn about the unique brain based damage and the location of those problems.  I hope in the future with increasing understanding of the brain through newer imaging methodologies, I will be ready to understand how damage exactly affects learning.  I’m getting ready!

I always ask for eye reports and neurology reports from parents. These are equally important to understand whether the eye is healthy and providing the information to the brain and whether the brain is healthy enough to receive it. Keeping the brain as a focus of my discussions with teams and parents help drive home the location of the visual problem (the brain), the possibility of improvement, importance of assessment and the importance of targeted interventions to increase access and provide a learning platform for visual skills to grow for children with CVI.

If I understand, I can explain.  If I explain well to parents and teams, they become my partner in the assessment and interventions for children. This is the primary job of a TVI.  Teams and parents that can observe the CVI characteristics they see everyday and understand the functioning are better ready to create and provide accurate environmental supports for learning and for charting progress.