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Request for
Research
Over the previous decade,
great progress has been made in brain research. With it, the
understanding of mental conditions and disorders improved. And
yet, when I was confronted with mental conditions in my family,
it became apparent that there are still many unknowns. How the
brain works and the root causes of mental conditions and
disorders remain a mystery. Consequently, there wasn’t much hope
for a true cure for these conditions.
Today, however, I can argue
that my son, who used to have dyslexia – a learning disability
that hinders the development of reading and writing skills – and
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), is as good as
cured. In the process, I found treatment for my own symptoms,
which were different. Actually, the main symptom didn’t appear
to have anything to do with a mental issue. And yet, the same
therapy led to success in treating my condition.
As we went through two
“surprise” therapies – therapies seemingly unrelated to dyslexia
or ADHD – I recognized striking similarities with the capacity
management of large computers, an area in which I used to be a
specialist. I wanted to understand what was going on. “Why are
the therapies effective?” I asked the creators of the therapies.
Although they had some ideas, they couldn’t give me a
satisfactory answer.
I searched the Internet and
was amazed that capacity management, storage management, and
knowledge management/information management did not appear to be
given the importance I felt they deserved. With the exception of
computer-based neural networks, it was hard to find anything.
With that, I decided to do
something to raise the level of attention given to capacity,
storage and information management in brain research. And so the
idea for this book was born. At some point, the bits and pieces
came together: It’s all about information management, and there
must be a surprisingly simple mechanism at work. It became
obvious how, at least theoretically, the human brain may store
and process information. This led to my development of the
information management model.
As this project moved
forward, things became increasingly strange. On one hand, I
found growing evidence of successful treatment for dyslexia. And
yet, by the beginning of 2006, there was still strong opposition
by influential scientists and doctors in the country where I
live. They said, “There is no scientific proof. This therapy
doesn’t work.” Even classifications such as “rubbish
therapy” went around.
Indeed, despite considerable
research, it wasn’t possible to confirm some of the successes
claimed by earlier surprise therapies. Scientists are also
correct in saying that the therapy that led to the results seen
with my son isn’t scientifically proven. But this conflicts with
our personal experiences and other success stories. Something
doesn’t add up.
Clearly, the potential
effects of dyslexia and its consequences – for example, the
difficulty of getting into higher education if you can’t read –
are too far-reaching to accept things as they are. With this,
the argument of “no scientific proof” isn’t good enough for
those who suffer from this and other conditions. Patients,
parents and teachers want convincing answers to questions such
as these:
-
Why don’t we hear or see information
indicating whether the research done to date aligns with the
logic of the new surprise therapies?
-
What is the scientific reasoning as to why
dyslexia patients don’t appear to have dyslexia anymore
after following surprise therapies?
-
Why is it that the “capacity bottleneck”
argument and information management seem to be getting no
attention in mental disorder research?
That said, through the
information management model I outline in this book, I will
present strong reasoning as to why dyslexia disappears following
certain surprise therapies. The base argument is surprisingly
simple: A capacity bottleneck is removed.
Feel free to judge for
yourself. I have tried to write it in such a way that
understanding the arguments requires no specialized knowledge.
In an effort to get at least
some research started, I contacted scientists and managed to
introduce the content of this book to a few of them. Although
there was clear interest, it became evident that it would be
extremely difficult to find the budget and the right mix of
skills required for such research.
Moreover, finding a free
slot on scientists’ busy agendas was another non-trivial
obstacle. Consequently, I made approaching researchers a lower
priority. Instead, I decided to follow the route of least
resistance: a public request for research. Let’s see what those
who suffer from mental conditions and disorders think about this.
Perhaps public opinion can create such a level of interest that
research projects will be started in the near future.
In that respect, this entire
book is a public request for research along the lines of the
surprise therapies and the information management model.
1
Prologue
It all began during the
summer of 2004, when I was switching between TV channels. A
broadcast of a Belgium station got my attention. A private
clinic in the United Kingdom called DDAT claimed amazing results
for the treatment of dyslexia. No drugs or any heavy exercise
were needed – only some balance exercises. This immediately
caught our attention, because our son had been diagnosed with
dyslexia a few years earlier.
When our son began to learn
reading and writing at school, it appeared to be more difficult
for him than for his classmates. He received special attention
and, after a while, extra exercises. And yet he kept falling
farther and farther behind. After he was tested to assess his
learning abilities, there was good news. In some areas, such as
logical thinking, he was well advanced and, on average, he
matched the average for children of the same age in The
Netherlands.
Unfortunately, being
advanced in some areas and average in general means something is
well below average: His reading and writing abilities were well
behind, and he was diagnosed with dyslexia. He later was also
diagnosed with ADHD.
With the dyslexia diagnosis,
he got special reading and writing exercises – the argument
being that only extensive reading and writing exercises in
connection with some physical exercises, such as finger
training, would help. This, however, didn’t deliver sufficient
results. His classmates moved on, while even with the greatest
level of attention, our son had greater difficulty keeping pace
with the class.
Because the normal school
system is tailored to the average pupil, whose mental abilities
develop at a faster pace, we decided to enroll him in a school
specializing in cases like his. He was fortunate, because the
school had a new exercise program for severe cases of dyslexia,
and it helped. He made real progress. Unfortunately, it didn’t
get him to the level of his age group, and at the age of 13, he
still hated reading. Trying to get him to read something or to
surf the Internet always resulted in one answer: “No!” It should
be obvious that this response had direct implications for all
the paperwork he had to do at school and for his further
education.
With the experts unable to
provide a better treatment, the U.K. therapy had our full
attention. But there was more to come. A few days after the TV
broadcast, we noticed a small article in our newspaper. Somebody
named van Gemert was coming to town to talk about dyslexia. It
was within walking distance, so the decision to attend was easy.
To our surprise, van Gemert also claimed amazing results. Again,
it was a new and simple treatment, and it was drastically
different from what the experts had told us before. We filled
out the van Gemert assessment form and went for a free initial
assessment.
From there we had to decide
which treatment option we wanted to follow – the van Gemert or
U.K. option. At the time, our understanding of the van Gemert
option was that it didn’t take away the root cause, but the U.K.
method did. With that, we decided on the U.K. option.
As we filled in the
assessment forms for both options, I began to realize there
might be some treatment that could be applicable to me. This
wasn’t for dyslexia but because of difficulties I was having
with my vision. At the time, I was spending many hours behind
computer screens, and I suffered from difficulties focusing.
Letters and words appeared unclear on the screen. The harder I
tried to get the words into focus, the longer it took to write a
letter. I had to read the letter over repeatedly, because I
didn’t recall what I had written half a page before. In other
words, it appeared my concentration and memory weren’t working
as efficiently as they were supposed to. And headaches showed up
sooner or later. Obviously, those were things I wanted to return
to normal.
The focusing problem wasn’t
new – I had it for many years. And to make things a bit more
challenging, it wasn’t a permanent condition. There were weeks
when the focusing problem was there and then weeks, even months,
without a problem. What was troublesome was that the periods
without the problem became shorter, and the problem was more
prevalent in the afternoon than in the morning.
I had told my optician about
the problem two years earlier. He prescribed new glasses and
suggested that I probably would need reading glasses in a few
years. Well, despite the new glasses, the focusing problem
remained, and during the two years, I realized something didn’t
add up.
Then came van Gemert. His
approach to dyslexia focuses around the eyesight, and part of
the treatment involves a type of glasses usually not prescribed.
I thought he must be the better expert and went for an
assessment.
As my son was tested by DDAT
in London and I for the van Gemert therapy® in Rotterdam, The
Netherlands, I started to understand the reasoning behind each
of the therapies. Surprisingly, the fundamental arguments of
DDAT and van Gemert were similar. The real surprise, however,
came when I discovered parallels between these therapies and the
capacity and storage management of computers – areas in which I
used to be a specialist. |
