Joanna Christodoulou

• Professor (Associate) at MGH Institute for Health Professions

Children’s reading progress typically slows during extended breaks in formal education, such as summer vacations. This stagnation can be especially concerning for children with reading difficulties or disabilities, such as dyslexia, because of the potential to exacerbate the skills gap between them and their peers. Reading interventions can prevent...

The extended summer break from school brings a renewed opportunity to offer high-quality literacy experiences to vulnerable readers, including children with reading disabilities (RD). Students with RD trail their peers in reading progress during the school year; the summer months present an opportunity to address the gap in reading achievement. Pol...

Children with dyslexia frequently also struggle with math. However, studies of reading disability (RD) rarely assess math skill, and the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying co‐occurring reading and math disability (RD+MD) are not clear. The current study aimed to identify behavioral and neurocognitive factors associated with co‐occurring MD among...

Children’s reading progress typically slows during extended breaks in formal education, such as summer vacations. This stagnation can be especially concerning for children with learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, because of the potential to exacerbate the skills gap between them and their peers. Reading interventions can prevent skill loss and...

In the early 2000s, Kurt Fischer and colleagues founded the Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) field (Blake & Gardner, 2007; Fischer et al., 2007), including a flagship journal, society (International Mind, Brain, Education Society [IMBES]), and a master's degree program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (Harvard). The MBE program was first...

Unlabelled: Students with language-based learning disabilities (LBLD) can face elevated socio-emotional well-being challenges in addition to literacy challenges. We examined the prevalence of risk and resilience factors among adolescents with LBLD (N = 93), ages 16-18, and the association with reading performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data...

Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) strongly predicts disparities in reading development, yet it is unknown whether early environments also moderate the cognitive and neurobiological bases of reading disorders (RD) such as dyslexia, the most prevalent learning disability. SES-diverse 6-9-year-old children (n=155, half with RD) completed behavioral...

What makes math difficulties so common in children with dyslexia? The current study aimed to identify behavioral and neurocognitive factors associated with co-occurring reading disability (RD) and math disability (MD). We tested reading, math, and cognitive skills in a sample of 86 children in 3rd–7th grade (ages 9-13) with RD. Within this sample,...

This study explored the effects of Specific Learning Disability (SLD) and socioeconomic status (SES) on the longitudinal development of reading and math from kindergarten through fifth grade in the nationally-representative ECLS-K:2011 dataset. First we used hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to compare reading and math skills at school entry and g...

Students with language-based learning disabilities (LBLD) can face elevated socio-emotional well- being challenges in addition to literacy challenges. We examined the prevalence of risk and resilience factors among adolescents with LBLD (N = 93), ages 16-18, and the association with reading performance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collec...

In this chapter, we examine reading outcomes and socioeconomic status (SES) using a developmental cognitive and educational neuroscience perspective. Our focus is on reading achievement and intervention outcomes for students from lower SES backgrounds who struggle with reading. Socioeconomic disadvantage is a specific type of vulnerability students...

In this chapter, we examine reading outcomes and socioeconomic status (SES) using a developmental cognitive and educational neuroscience perspective. Our focus is on reading achievement and intervention outcomes for students from lower SES backgrounds who struggle with reading. Socioeconomic disadvantage is a specific type of vulnerability students...

Developmental dyslexia (DD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are two of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders among school-age children. These disorders frequently co-occur, with up to 40-50% of children with one diagnosis meeting criteria for the other, and similar percentages of children with either DD or ADHD exhibiting...

The overall goal of the ISEE Assessment is to pool multi-disciplinary expertise on educational systems and reforms from a range of stakeholders in an open and inclusive manner, and to undertake a scientifically robust and evidence based assessment that can inform education policy-making at all levels and on all scales. Its aim is not to be policy p...

Purpose Assessment is a crucial skill for speech-language pathologists, who rely on standardized tests to identify characteristics of speech, language, hearing, literacy, and related skill sets. Training in assessment administration is an integral part of graduate education that lays the foundation for appropriate use of these tools. Teaching stude...

For children with medication-resistant epilepsy who undergo multilobar or hemispheric surgery, the goal of achieving seizure freedom is met with a variety of potential functional consequences, both favorable and unfavorable. However, there is a paucity of literature that comprehensively addresses the cognitive, medical, behavioral, orthopedic, and...

Knowledge of the relations among learners' socio-emotional characteristics and competencies as they engage in mathematics and reading is limited, especially for children with academic difficulties. This study examined the relations between anxiety, motivation, and competence in mathematics and reading, within and across domains, in an academically-...

Objective Following hemispherectomy surgery, children’s educational outcomes are of great importance but are understudied. The study goal was to investigate reading, language, and nonverbal cognitive skills in children obligatorily relying on a left versus right hemisphere using a cross-sectional design. Methods Participants (ages 6–18) who had un...

Knowledge of the relations among learners’ socio-emotional characteristics and competencies as they engage in mathematics and reading is limited, especially for children with academic difficulties. This study examined the relations between anxiety, motivation, and competence in mathematics and reading, within and across domains, in an academically-...

Accurate and timely identification of reading disabilities (RDs) is essential for providing appropriate and effective remediation for struggling readers. However, practices for identifying RDs lack sufficient documentation within and across educational and clinical settings. The wide range of possible practices intended to identify struggling reade...

Accurate and timely identification of reading disabilities (RDs) is essential for providing appropriate and effective remediation for struggling readers. However, practices for identifying RDs lack sufficient documentation within and across educational and clinical settings. The wide range of possible practices intended to identify struggling reade...

National Science Foundation Division of Research on Learning (Grant 1644540)

The authors investigated the roles of reading fluency in mediating and moderating the relation between executive functions and reading comprehension. Linguistically diverse students ( n = 106) were assessed on multiple measures of reading fluency at the passage and word levels, reading comprehension, and executive functions in grade 7 and again in...

Learning to read is one of the most important achievements of early childhood, and sets the stage for future success. Even prior to school entry, children’s foundational literacy skills predict their later academic trajectories (Duncan et al., 2007; La Paro & Pianta, 2000; Lloyd, 1969; Lloyd, 1978). Children learn to read with differing levels of e...

Neuromyths are misconceptions about brain research and its application to education and learning. Previous research has shown that these myths may be quite pervasive among educators, but less is known about how these rates compare to the general public or to individuals who have more exposure to neuroscience. This study is the first to use a large...

Although reading disability (RD) and socioeconomic status (SES) are independently associated with variation in reading ability and brain structure/function, the joint influence of SES and RD on neuroanatomy and/or response to intervention is unknown. In total, 65 children with RD (ages 6-9) with diverse SES were assigned to an intensive, 6-week sum...

Identification of specific neurophysiological dysfunctions resulting in selective reading difficulty (dyslexia) has remained elusive. In addition to impaired reading development, individuals with dyslexia frequently exhibit behavioral deficits in perceptual adaptation. Here, we assessed neurophysiological adaptation to stimulus repetition in adults...

Objective: We investigated reading skills in individuals who have undergone left cerebral hemispherectomy and in readers with developmental dyslexia to understand diverse characteristics contributing to reading difficulty. Although dyslexia is a developmental disorder, left hemispherectomy requires that patients (re)establish the language process...

This chapter shall provide an overview of reading fluency research in the past two decades. We will first discuss fluency deficits and then discuss the genetic and brain behavior activation patterns associated with reading fluency deficits in individuals with dyslexia. Finally, we will present data from special abnormal populations with a specific...

Objective: We examined the white-matter microstructure of the left arcuate fasciculus, which has been associated with reading ability, in beginning readers with or without reading disability. Method: Groups were typically reading children (n = 26) or children with reading disability (n = 26), Ages 6–9, and equated on nonverbal cognitive abilities....

Efficacy of an intensive reading intervention implemented during the nonacademic summer was evaluated in children with reading disabilities or difficulties (RD). Students (ages 6-9) were randomly assigned to receive Lindamood-Bell's Seeing Stars program (n = 23) as an intervention or to a waiting-list control group (n = 24). Analysis of pre- and po...

We explored the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and language/cognition in children with reading disability (ages 6-9). Despite lower-SES children initially exhibiting significantly lower non-verbal, oral language, and reading scores, they benefitted from an orthographic imagery-based intervention to a greater degree than higher-SES...

Purpose: Although socioeconomic status (SES) strongly predicts academic performance, cognitive ability, and brain structure and function, the impact of SES has yet to be explored in children with dyslexia. We asked how the brain structure of children with dyslexia varies with SES, and if there are SES-related differences in response to intervention...

Functional neuroimaging research has identified multiple brain regions supporting reading-related activity in typical and atypical readers across different alphabetic languages. Previous meta-analyses performed on these functional magnetic resonance imaging findings typically report significant between-group contrasts comparing typical readers and...

Objective Many forms of epilepsy are associated with aberrant neuronal connections, but the relationship between such pathological connectivity and the underlying physiological predisposition to seizures is unclear. We sought to characterize the cortical excitability profile of a developmental form of epilepsy known to have structural and functiona...

Although the neural systems supporting single word reading are well studied, there are limited direct comparisons between typical and dyslexic readers of the neural correlates of reading fluency. Reading fluency deficits are a persistent behavioral marker of dyslexia into adulthood. The current study identified the neural correlates of fluent readi...

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Reading disability in children with dyslexia has been proposed to reflect impairment in auditory timing perception. We investigated one aspect of timing perception-temporal grouping-as present in prosodic phrase boundaries of natural speech, in age-matched groups of children, ages 6-8 years, with and without dyslexia. Prosodic phrase boundaries are...

Reading requires the extraction of letter shapes from a complex background of text, and an impairment in visual shape extraction would cause difficulty in reading. To investigate the neural mechanisms of visual shape extraction in dyslexia, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain activation while adults with or without...

Diagnosis of DyslexiaThe Reading Brain and DyslexiaNeuroimaging Methods in the Study of DyslexiaTheoretical Perspectives on Dyslexia and Neuroimaging EvidenceDyslexia Across CulturesNeuroimaging Studies of Reading InterventionsConclusion References

When people wakefully rest in the functional MRI scanner, their minds wander, and they engage a so-called default mode (DM) of neural processing that is relatively suppressed when attention is focused on the outside world. Accruing evidence suggests that DM brain systems activated during rest are also important for active, internally focused psycho...

Periventricular nodular heterotopia (PNH) is a malformation of cortical development associated with epilepsy and dyslexia. Evidence suggests that heterotopic gray matter can be functional in brain malformations and that connectivity abnormalities may be important in these disorders. We hypothesized that nodular heterotopia develop abnormal connecti...

Professional siloing within medical institutions has been identified as a problem in medical education, including resident training. The authors discuss how trainees from different disciplines can collaborate to address this problem. A group of trainees from psychiatry, developmental medicine, neurology, and education came together to develop a com...

Phonological awareness, knowledge that speech is composed of syllables and phonemes, is critical for learning to read. Phonological awareness precedes and predicts successful transition from language to literacy, and weakness in phonological awareness is a leading cause of dyslexia, but the brain basis of phonological awareness for spoken language...

The development of reading skills in language minority (LM) learners, particularly during the middle school years, remains unclear despite the increasing need for educators to serve this rapidly growing population. In this study, the English reading comprehension growth of middle school LM learners was investigated using a longitudinal design and t...

Understanding the neurophysiology of human cognitive development relies on methods that enable accurate comparison of structural and functional neuroimaging data across brains from people of different ages. A fundamental question is whether the substantial brain growth and related changes in brain morphology that occur in early childhood permit val...

The term brain based is often used to describe learning theories, principles, and products. Although there have been calls urging educators to be cautious in interpreting and using such material, consumers may find it challenging to understand the role of the brain and to discriminate among brain based products to determine which would be suitable...

ABSTRACTABSTRACT—The theme of Usable Knowledge in Mind, Brain, and Education will be a special section that will appear regularly in the journal. The section will focus on the synergistic connections between biology, cognitive science, and human development on the one hand and educational thought, policy, and practice on the other. Efforts to creat...

Previous article in issueNext article in issue The relationship between neuroscience and education can prove most fruitful when it fosters a bidirectional exchange of ideas and approaches. The connection between neuroscience and education can be guided by defining roles, approaches, implications, and applications. The purpose of this discussion is...

Within the last decade there has been an increase in the use of structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural basis of human perception, cognition and behavior. Moreover, this non-invasive imaging method has grown into a tool for clinicians and researchers to explore typical and atypical brain development. Al...