Georgetown
Dr. Guinevere Eden is the Director of Georgetown University's Center for the Study of Learning. She is devoted to the potential for the adult dyslexic's brain to change.

Dr. Eden initiated the first research study to examine the brain systems related to successful phonological-based instruction in dyslexic adults.

Dr. Eden, with Georgetown University, has done many scientific studies on the brain and reading.

In one such study, dyslexics underwent an eight week reading intervention. The study involved students from Jemicy School in Baltimore and adults, like Sandi Dillon.

For countless adults, dyslexia is a burden they hide from the world.

In Demystifying Dyslexia, we meet Sandi Dillon a Hair Stylist and Political Activist from North Carolina. As an adult with dyslexia, Sandi decided to participate in Georgetown University's reading intervention.

For both groups, students and adults, the reading instruction was only part of the experiment. Scientists wanted to study the brains of these dyslexics to see how the reading intervention may have changed them.

Subjects were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging, or FMRI. A screen inside the scanner displays word games designed to activate the brain's reading centers.

FMRI scans of non-dyslexic readers show that most of them engage three main areas of the brain for reading. Scans of dyslexic readers show a reliance on different areas.

Scans of the dyslexic subjects taken after the reading interventions show remarkable change. These brains re-wire themselves for reading.

As scientists learn more about the causes of dyslexia, we are realizing an even greater capacity for the brain to change, at any age.