Dyscalculia

October is Dysautonomia Awareness Month. As we near October, I can't help but to think of reasons why dysautonomia (along with the abundance of medical conditions lying in the autonomic dysfunctions category) needs so much awareness in our communities. It's ridiculous how the amount of uneducated medical professionals outweigh the tens of millions of patients living with this life-altering illness who are spending an average of six years fighting to get a proper diagnosis so they can hopefully find relief from these horrid symptoms. However, even with a dysautonomia diagnosis, most physicians are so ill-informed of this term they lack the knowledge of effective treatments, especially emergency room specialists and "adult doctors". Below are a list of reasons (in nor particular order) we are in desperate need of awareness as well as what awareness starts with. My wish is that one day everyone will speak about dysautonomia like that talk about cancer and autism. 1) Research Funds. We need awareness in order to gain research funds for better treatment options and maybe even a cure in the future. Did you know POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, a common form of dysautonomia) is more common than Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson's Disease? Yet POTS research earns MUCH less funds. 2) Physician Knowledge. Dysautonomia is not always taught in medical school. Many more pediatricians recognize dysfunctions of the autonomic nervous system because it is often believed…

Dyscalculia is a learning disability where the student has serious problems in mathematics, more specifically, related to mathematical calculations and reasoning. This disability prevents the student from obtaining the skills that student need to perform mathematical calculations (Raja & Kumar, 2011, p. 41). This disability can take on many forms, including the inability to take the knowledge he or she knows, and relate it to quantities, difficulty in reading or writing numbers and…

"stupidity and laziness" (2005, Butterworth, p. 456). Such a notion is difficult to imagine in our world today, which we owe to scientific evidence allowing us to understand the genetic factors contributing to LDs. Yet, a number of LDs, such as dyscalculia remain relatively unexplored despite increasing awareness and acceptance of LD in general. Nonetheless, awareness establishes an environment of advocacy; support, together with early interventions will open the door to academic successes for…

Case Synopsis Assessment and management of dyscalculia in 10 year old boys. Dyscalculia also referred to as a mathematics disorder or disability, affects an estimated 1-5 % of general population, Overtime there have been a number of neural or brain based reasons attributed to dyscalculia. Dyscalculia may result of an acquired brain injury/pathology where there is damage to the angular gyrus Dyscalculia may be developmental in nature and of genetic origin, in which the complexity of inter…

By the time I received the email announcement that University of Michigan Health System diagnosed me with Acquired Dyscalculia, I felt like sinking into a bottomless glacial. Everything around me appeared as featureless hollow darkness. I heard with a chill on my back that the car accident occurred last summer was speculated to be cause. It was on way home back from Thailand, where I went to support the education at Vieng Neua Primary School as a volunteer. I was afraid, indeed, that the…

Dyslexia is a type of disability where someone has difficulty in reading. They have a much harder time with characterizing accurate word recognition and they also tend to be poor spellers. Dyscalculia is when somebody had a difficulty in math. This is a type of condition that makes it harder to make sense with math numbers and concepts. And lastly, Dysgraphia is when somebody has a difficulty in writing. Now all of these disabilities not only make it harder for people to perform everyday tasks,…

One particular case caught my attention: the lady with the deadly left hand (Ramachandran, 1998, pp. 12-13). It was creepy to read about her story, but I was wondering how common are strokes in the corpus callosum? Additionally, does the malignant left hand do anything else besides strangle people (e.g., reach for random objects)? Another case that caught my attention was that of Bill Marshall, who had problems with arithmetic or dyscalculia (Ramchandran, 1998, pp. 17-19). Bill was fine in other…

showing inappropriate behaviour, and difficulty with reading, writing or understanding information (Nidirect, 2014). Within SEN, a distinction is made for specific learning difficulties, which include dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and dyslexia. Dyscalculia refers to the difficulty one might have in acquiring arithmetic skills, especially number fact knowledge (Landerl, Fussenegger, Moll, & Willburger, 2009). Dysgraphia is a disability that affects one’s writing abilities (National Center…

productive and successful lives, therefore, it is important for teachers to assist students’ acquisition of conceptual understandings to attain numerical proficiency. Developing children’s numeracy capabilities teachers need to consider various factors, including recognising and adapting content to student competencies, cognition and developmental levels, delivery of effective and explicit instruction, supporting mathematical language and vocabulary and sequential planning based on a quality…

“Many of our children today suffer from a Learning disability that disables the child from learning how too properly write/read/or speaks. For children with the disability, their peers sometimes be little them making it hard for the child to learn. Improper evaluation has led to the advancement of the disorders in our children. The research I conducted was to see the effects of improper evaluation on children. My research proyed that improper evaluation at schools causes advancement in the…