Session:
Sally E. Shaywitz, M.D. and Bennett A. Shaywitz, M.D.
THE SCIENCE OF DYSLEXIA: TRANSLATING RESEARCH INTO POLICY AND PRACTICE
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Dr. Shaywitz is the Audrey G. Ratner Professor in Learning Development at the Yale University School of Medicine and is the Co-Director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity at the Yale University School of Medicine. She has devoted her career to better understanding and helping children and adults who are dyslexic. Her research provides the basic framework: the conceptual model, epidemiology, and neurobiology for the scientific study of dyslexia. Together with her husband, Dr. Bennett Shaywitz, she originated and championed the “Sea of Strengths” model of dyslexia which emphasizes a sea of strengths of higher critical thinking and creativity surrounding the encapsulated weakness found in children and adults who are dyslexic. Dr. Shaywitz is the author of over 200 scientific articles, chapters and books, including the widely acclaimed national best-seller, Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at Any Level (Knopf, 2003; Vintage, 2005) which received the Margo Marek Book Award and the NAMI Book Award. She co-chairs the National Research Council Committee on Gender Differences in the Careers of Science, Engineering and Mathematics Faculty; she has most recently served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Understanding the Biology of Sex and Gender Differences; on the National Reading Panel; and on the Committee to Prevent Reading Difficulties in Young Children for the National Research Council. She also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal.
Dr. Shaywitz is the Charles and Helen Schwab Professor in Dyslexia and Learning Development and is the Chief of Pediatric Neurology and Co-Director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity at the Yale University School of Medicine. He has a long-standing interest in disorders of learning and attention in children and young adults. He has devoted his career to better understanding and elucidating the neurobiological basis of reading and dyslexia and to ensuring that this new knowledge is translated into the better care and treatment of children and adults who are dyslexic. Early on, Dr. Shaywitz recognized the great potential of functional brain imaging and led a national effort to apply functional imaging, especially functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to the study of reading and dyslexia in children and adults. He has made major contributions to understanding the neurobiology, specifically the brain organization for reading, including the identification and localization of specific neural systems for reading; delineation of differences in these systems between good and poor readers (including a neural signature for dyslexia); the functional role of the system for fluency; the finding of at least two neurobiological subtypes of reading disability (one, primarily inherent; the other, more environmentally influenced); and the demonstration of plasticity in the neural systems for reading and their ability to reorganize in response to an effective, evidence-based intervention. He sits on the editorial board of Pediatrics in Review, Learning Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal, and Child Neuropsychology.
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