What is LD? What are the symptoms?

Your child is struggling in school, falling behind their peers, and having trouble reading and calculating. Their teacher suspects they have a learning disability (LD) and you’re not sure what to do.

What is LD? What are the symptoms?

Learning Disability (LD) is a neurological condition that affects the way a person learns. People with LD can have difficulty with reading, writing, math, and other academic skills.

• Auditory processing disorder (APD): People with APD have difficulty processing what they hear. They may have trouble understanding what someone is saying, following directions, or remembering what they have heard.
• Dyslexia: Dyslexia is a reading disorder. People with dyslexia may have difficulty with decoding words, fluency, or comprehension.
• Dysgraphia: Dysgraphia is a writing disorder. People with dysgraphia may have difficulty with spelling, grammar, or handwriting.
• Dyscalculia: Dyscalculia is a math disorder. People with dyscalculia may have difficulty with understanding math concepts, solving math problems, or performing calculations.

Learning disabilities (LD) affect about 5-10% of children. This means that in a class of 50 students, 2-5 children will have learning problems. LD is more common in boys than girls. Boys often have problems with reading and listening, while girls often have problems with math. At first glance, children with LD may seem normal and have normal IQs. However, most parents and teachers do not know that their child has LD and they do not receive the appropriate treatment. Most children with LD think they are not good at studying or are considered stupid and dull.

Learning disabilities (LD) can be caused by

• Brain abnormalities: These can be present from birth or develop later in life. Some examples include infections like meningitis or encephalitis, high fever, seizures, or head injuries.
• Differences in brain function: Even if the brain structure is normal, there may be differences in the way the brain functions. This can affect how a person learns and processes information.

Dyslexia: The child mixes up words, misspells words, and chooses the wrong language, but can still speak

• Often have problems with the left brain (Left Parietotemporal lobes, occipito-temporal lobe) Having less brain matter than normal, or the function of this part of the brain is slower than normal.
• The corpus callosum is not working properly.(Many children who have been treated by doctors do not also have a corpus callosum in the Facebook group.)

Dyscalculia: It is often associated with problems in the brain’s frontal, parietal, and visual cortices. A child with dyscalculia who was also colorblind was given visual stimulation to the brain. After three sessions of stimulation, the person’s ability to calculate numbers improved significantly, from being able to calculate only hundreds to being able to calculate millions.

Dysgraphia: In normal people, these are the parts of the brain used when writing a book

• Premotor cortex (dorsal & ventral)
• Parietal cortex (superior)
• Occipito-temporal cortex (fusiform gyrus )
• Cerebellum

In children with problems in these parts of the brain (such as autistic children, children with ADHD, children with LD, brain atrophy, etc.), it can make writing very difficult.

How can Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: TMS help?

Stimulating underactive or atrophied brain parts to work more. The specific parts of the brain that need to be stimulated depend on the individual’s problems. This is why doctors want to see MRI or CT brain scans, because at least they can help identify the abnormal areas. However, fMRI would be ideal, which is difficult to do in real life.

In Europe, we use a method of magnetic wave stimulation combined with training.

Brain stimulation is like hardware, like replacing the engine to make it more powerful.

Learning and training is like software, like training someone to drive better.

Nowadays, we often only treat the learning and training aspects of the problem, which helps to some extent, but is mostly tiring for teachers and parents.

When combined with TMS, it has been found to help much faster, like taking the expressway. In my experience, it can speed up by about 5-20 times.