Time, July 5, 1999

WHAT?" WHEN NICOLE DAVIS was six, that was her standard reply to even the simplest question. Although seemingly bright, she lagged far behind her peers in speaking and reading and bad a hard time making friends. Two years of private speech therapy had failed to bring her up to speed. So her mother Donna enrolled her in "Fast ForWord," & powerful video-game program developed by Scientific Learning Corp. of Berkeley, Calif., to aid children like her who cannot processthe sounds of language fast enough to comprehend normal speech.

Nicole spent six weeks of intense game playing at a speech clinic in New Jersey, emerging "like a different child,' Donna Davis says. Today the ebullient second-grader chatters away with classmates, gets good grades and has stellar reading skills. As Nicole puts it, "I like to write stories and poems, read books and play with my friends." The software that allowed Nicole to shine represents a promising application of recent and remarkable discoveries about the power of the brain to learn now tricks.

Scientists are finding that the brain is "massively plastic" - not rigidly fixed like a computer chip-and can rewire itself throughout life with the help of rigorous training. The Fast ForWord games are like mental aerobics-designed to strengthen weak connections in those parts of the brain that support language skills.

The software that allowed Nicole to shine represents a promising application of recent and remarkable discoveries about the power of the brain to learn now tricks. Scientists are finding that the brain is "massively plastic" - not rigidly fixed like a computer chip-and can rewire itself throughout life with the help of rigorous training.

The Fast ForWord games are like mental aerobics-designed to strengthen weak connections in those parts of the brain that support language skills. The remarfaible plasticity of the brain has put scientists in hot pursuit of novel ways to treat & host of ailments. "What we are is a product of learning progressions in the brain," says Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientfst at the University of California, San Francisco, and a co-founder of Scientific Learning. "A lot of people are thinking about how to use intensive training to remediate the impairments of mankind."

Scientific Learning scored its biggest coup in May with a pilot project to provide Fast ForWord to the Chicago public school system. Right now, private clinicians are the chief providers of Fast For- Word training, which can cost more than $2,500. While Fast ForWord hasn't helped everyone, it has shown remarkable success with many kids who suffer from a condition known as central auditory processing disorder. People with this ailment, which may afflict up to 4 million primary and secondary school students, have difficulty distinguishing between phonemes-the basic building blocks of language-and particularly between consonants like b, d and p, which fly by in milliseconds during conversation. The condition may also retard reading, since the children can't easily match up the indistinct sounds they hear with the letters on a page.

The Fast ForWord games attack this problem by training youngsters to distinguish among phonemes, first at artificially slowed speeds and then at normal rate of speech. The kids click their mouses on animated screen games to identify what they hear. The training is intense-students must sit before computers for 100 min. a day, five days a week for four to eight weeks-because it takes sharply focused attention to rewire a brain. Last fall, Scientific Learning rolled out Fast ForWord II for children who can use additional training.

(Parental disclosure: this writer's12-year-old son Billy made welcome strides
in both programs.)

How well does it work? Scientific Learning's studies of 1,000 users claim that 90% of them gained a 1.5 average of 1.5 years to two years in such skills as following directions and understanding complex sentences.

But the company does not yet know why some children benefit more than others, or why some may not benefit at all. "There is no silver bullet," warns Reid Lyon, the head of child development and behavior studies at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which is conducting a five-year study of Fast ForWord and other remediation programs. Scientific Learning's harshest critics charge that it hasn't done its homework. For example, many speech experts contend that reading difficulties arise from a failure of the brain to translate sounds into language, not from an inability to detect clear sounds, as Scientific Learning maintains.

The company's own studies have "never been done with propel controls" to test its theories, argues psychologist Michael Studdert-Kennedy, chairman of Haskins Laboratories, a leading center for the study of speech and language at Yale University Replies Paula Tallal, a neuroscientist at Rutgers University's Newark, N.J., campus and a co-founder of Scientific Learning: "What matters in the end is, does it work? Not, do we agree on theory?"

Gratified administrators at the Elim Christian School outside Chicago would endorse that view. Fast ForWord has worked for roost of the 40 or so Elim students who have completed the program, says Linda Kleyn, director of network services at the school. That persuaded the Chicago system to give Fast ForWord a try. Still, Scientific Learning will have to be boffo to win broad acceptance in a market marked by fierce competition, fending theorists and frequent disdain for the profit motive. But the payoff for any company that can help kids overcome barriers to learning must be measured in more than dollars. "Boy, if you can increase the confidence of students in their own ability, you can affect a change in their lives," says Kleyn. Back in New Jersey, Nicole Davis might -want to write a poem about that.

TIME, JULY 5, 1999