Links for Keyword: Dyslexia

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By Jennifer Nalewicki After years of fumbling while reading the written word, Christian Boer, a graphic designer from the Netherlands, has developed a way to help tackle his dyslexia. The 30-year-old created a font called Dyslexie that has proved to decrease the number of errors made by dyslexics while reading. The font works by tweaking the appearance of certain letters of the alphabet that dyslexics commonly misconstrue, such as "d" and "b," to make them more recognizable. This month Boer released the font in English for U.S. users to purchase online. Boer began designing the font in 2008 while studying at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. It eventually became his graduate school project. In December 2010 a fellow student conducted an independent study on the font as part of a master's thesis and discovered a significant reduction in reading errors by dyslexics when reading Dutch text typed in Dyslexie as opposed to the Arial font. Boer's research could likewise have a big impact on English speakers, given the prevalence of dyslexia when reading that language, as compared with Italian, whose words are pronounced more closely to how they are spelled. In the U.S. one out of every five persons is dyslexic, according to the National Institutes of Health. Unlike other readers, dyslexics have a tendency to rotate, swap and mirror letters, making it difficult for them to comprehend what they’re reading. For years it was thought that dyslexia was a vision problem, but scientists now know that the condition stems from the brain. Scans of dyslexic brains show that there are structural differences—including in the thalamus, which serves an information way station—when compared with other brains. Some dyslexics even see letters as suspended 3-D animations that twist before their eyes. "I perceived letters floating like balloons in my head," Boer says. As a means to finally "tie down" these balloons, Boer dedicated his time and graphic design skills to come up with Dyslexie. © 2011 Scientific American,

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 15951 - Posted: 10.27.2011

By PAM BELLUCK Many people consider dyslexia simply a reading problem in which children mix up letters and misconstrue written words. But increasingly scientists have come to believe that the reading difficulties of dyslexia are part of a larger puzzle: a problem with how the brain processes speech and puts together words from smaller units of sound. Now, a study published last week in the journal Science suggests that how dyslexics hear language may be more important than previously realized. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that people with dyslexia have more trouble recognizing voices than those without dyslexia. John Gabrieli, a professor of cognitive neuroscience, and Tyler Perrachione, a graduate student, asked people with and without dyslexia to listen to recorded voices paired with cartoon avatars on computer screens. The subjects tried matching the voices to the correct avatars speaking English and then an unfamiliar language, Mandarin. Nondyslexics matched voices to avatars correctly almost 70 percent of the time when the language was English and half the time when the language was Mandarin. But people with dyslexia were able to do so only half the time, whether the language was English or Mandarin. Experts not involved in the study said that was a striking disparity. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 9: Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 6: Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell
Link ID: 15640 - Posted: 08.02.2011

When people recognize voices, part of what helps make voice recognition accurate is noticing how people pronounce words differently. But individuals with dyslexia don't experience this familiar language advantage, say researchers. The likely reason: "phonological impairment." Tyler Perrachione with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains, "Even though all people who speak a language use the same words, they say those words just a little bit differently from one another--what is called 'phonetics' in linguistics." Phonetics is concerned with the physical properties of speech. Listeners are sensitive to phonetic differences as part of what makes a person's voice unique. But individuals with dyslexia have trouble recognizing these phonetic differences, whether a person is speaking a familiar language or a foreign one, Perrachione says. As a Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience at MIT, Perrachione recently examined the impacts of phonological impairment through experiments funded by the National Science Foundation's Directorate for Education and Human Resources. He and colleague Stephanie Del Tufo as well as Perrachione's MIT research advisor John Gabrieli hypothesized that if voice recognition by human listeners relies on phonological knowledge, then listeners with dyslexia would be impaired when identifying voices speaking their native language as compared to listeners without dyslexia. © 2011 U.S.News & World Report LP

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 9: Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 6: Hearing, Balance, Taste, and Smell
Link ID: 15626 - Posted: 07.30.2011

By Carolyn Y. Johnson WALTHAM — Lights dimmed, a hush fell over the hallway as Nicole Porter, cradling Ava in her arms, walked gingerly toward the powerful imaging equipment that would allow researchers to peer into her baby’s developing brain. Porter had spent hours coaxing Ava to sleep so she would lie still in the noisy scanner. Then, at the last minute, Ava’s eyes fluttered open and she gazed at the colorful ceiling. The experiment would have to start over. It was another frustrating moment in the difficult process of studying the brain during early development. Nothing was wrong with Ava; the 11-month-old from Boston was part of a study that uses brain imaging to see if early hallmarks of dyslexia can be seen years before children have trouble reading. Scientists believe that if they can identify nascent disorders such as dyslexia or autism earlier, and get a jump on therapy, they might eventually be able to prevent children from developing problems later. “We know many important pediatric disorders start to emerge early on, and some things, for example dyslexia, you might not pick up until they’re reading. But you know their brain has probably started to diverge from normal in some way early on,’’ said Dr. P. Ellen Grant of Children’s Hospital Boston, who is leading the study with Nadine Gaab, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s. The research is being done at the hospital’s Waltham clinic. © 2011 NY Times Co.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15338 - Posted: 05.17.2011

By Gareth Cook For more than 15 years, I have had a secret. My wife knows. My family knows, as do a few close friends. But what would my co-workers think? My editors? My sources on the science beat? more stories like this When I imagine them knowing, I can't get an image out of my head: My seventh-grade English teacher, glaring at me, with a look that needed no words. You are lazy and stupid, Gareth. Why are you even wasting my time? I am dyslexic. Reading is slow for me. If I try to read aloud, it is halting, even with children's books. I can't spell. I was never able to learn cursive, and I am virtually unable to take handwritten notes while someone is talking. If it weren't for a strange quirk in the disorder -- I can type notes and listen -- I could never have hidden my struggles at work, because I wouldn't be able to do my job at all. In the last few months, there has been a burst of interest in dyslexia, with cover stories in Time and Newsweek inspired by a new book, Overcoming Dyslexia. The author, Dr. Sally Shaywitz, is one of a group of scientists who have made tremendous progress in understanding the disorder over the last few years. © 2011 NY Times Co.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 14851 - Posted: 01.11.2011

by Greg Miller For children with dyslexia, reading doesn't come naturally, and only about 20% of them grow into normal readers by adulthood. No one knows why this is, and standard reading tests can't predict which kids will outgrow their reading problems. But brain scans can, according to a new study. The researchers say their findings provide clues about the neurobiology of dyslexia and could one day help educators identify students who could benefit from more intensive help. Neuroscientist Fumiko Hoeft of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and her colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain activity during reading in 45 children between the ages of 7 and 16, of whom 25 had dyslexia. After 2.5 years, the same children returned to the lab to take a battery of standardized reading tests. Then the researchers went back to the brain scans to see if there were differences in the kids with dyslexia who had made the biggest improvements. And indeed there were. Inside the scanner, participants had seen pairs of words flashed on a screen and been asked to indicate whether they rhymed. Children with dyslexia take longer and make more mistakes, especially when different spellings produce a rhyme, as in "gate" and "bait." To analyze brain activity evoked by this task, Hoeft's group used a method called multivariate pattern analysis, a statistical technique for comparing patterns of activation across the entire brain (Science, 13 June 2008, p. 1412). The patterns predicted with 92% accuracy which dyslexic kids exhibited above or below average gains in reading over the next 2.5 years, the researchers report online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This particular type of analysis doesn't reveal which brain regions are responsible, however. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 14808 - Posted: 12.22.2010

Children who are poor readers appear to have a disruption in the part of their brain involved in reading phonetically, according to a sophisticated brain imaging study funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The study also found that children who read poorly but who do not receive any extra help or training eventually compensate for their disability by using other parts of the brain as backup systems for the impaired brain regions. Although most of these children eventually do learn to read, they never do so with the same fluency as do good readers. This is probably because the "backup" brain systems they use when reading apparently cannot process printed information as easily as can the brain systems primarily involved in reading. The researchers, led by Bennett Shaywitz, M.D., of the Yale University School of Medicine, published their results in the July Biological Psychiatry.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 2422 - Posted: 06.24.2010

About five million Germans have serious learning difficulties when it comes to reading and writing. It is frequently the case that several members of the same family are affected. So hereditary disposition seems to play an important role in the occurrence of dyslexia. Scientists at the universities of Marburg, Würzburg and Bonn have been working on this question together with Swedish colleagues from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. In examinations of German children with serious reading and writing difficulties they have now succeeded in demonstrating for the first time the contribution of a specific gene. Precisely how it contributes to the disorder remains unclear. It is thought that the genes may affect the migration of nerve cells in the brain as it evolves. The results will be published in the January edition of the American Journal of Human Genetics, but have already been made available online (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJHG). For several years child and youth psychologists at the universities of Marburg and Würzburg searched for families in which at least one child was considered dyslexic. "We then analysed blood samples taken from the families to identify candidate genes – and in the end we found the right one," explains the scientist who headed this part of the study from Marburg, Privatdozent Dr. Gerd Schulte-Körne.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 8111 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By BRENT BOWERS It has long been known that dyslexics are drawn to running their own businesses, where they can get around their weaknesses in reading and writing and play on their strengths. But a new study of entrepreneurs in the United States suggests that dyslexia is much more common among small-business owners than even the experts had thought. The report, compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic. The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses. “We found that dyslexics who succeed had overcome an awful lot in their lives by developing compensatory skills,” Professor Logan said in an interview. “If you tell your friends and acquaintances that you plan to start a business, you’ll hear over and over, ‘It won’t work. It can’t be done.’ But dyslexics are extraordinarily creative about maneuvering their way around problems.” The study was based on a survey of 139 business owners in a wide range of fields across the United States. Professor Logan called the number who said they were dyslexic “staggering,” and said it was significantly higher than the 20 percent of British entrepreneurs who said they were dyslexic in a poll she conducted in 2001. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 11052 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Children with poor reading skills who underwent an intensive, six-month training program to improve their reading ability showed increased connectivity in a particular brain region, in addition to making significant gains in reading, according to a study funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The study was published in the Dec. 10, 2009, issue of Neuron. "We have known that behavioral training can enhance brain function." said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. "The exciting breakthrough here is detecting changes in brain connectivity with behavioral treatment. This finding with reading deficits suggests an exciting new approach to be tested in the treatment of mental disorders, which increasingly appear to be due to problems in specific brain circuits." For the study, Timothy Keller, Ph.D., and Marcel Just, Ph.D., both of Carnegie Mellon University, randomly assigned 35 poor readers ages 8–12, to an intensive, remedial reading program, and 12 to a control group that received normal classroom instruction. For comparison, the researchers also included 25 children of similar age who were rated as average or above-average readers by their teachers. The average readers also received only normal classroom instruction. Four remedial reading programs were offered, but few differences in reading improvements were seen among them. As such, results for participants in these programs were evaluated as a group. All of the programs were given over a six month schooling period, for five days a week in 50-minute sessions (100 hours total), with three students per teacher. The focus of these programs was improving readers’ ability to decode unfamiliar words.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 13556 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Researchers trying to tease out the genetic basis of dyslexia have discovered a location on chromosome 2 that may contain one or more genes that contribute to the reading disorder and make it difficult for people to rapidly pronounce pseudowords. The team from the University of Washington, headed by medical geneticists Dr. Wendy Raskind and Ellen Wijsman and developmental psychologist Virginia Berninger, cautioned that the new findings do not mean that scientists have found "the gene" responsible for dyslexia. "Just as with heart disease, no single gene will provide the answer to what causes dyslexia," said Raskind. "When you look at something that is inherited there could be multiple genes, perhaps as many as a hundred, that contribute to it. And when you look at any characteristic of a person, you must consider the environmental background. There are other factors besides genes that could modify a behavior." The study, published in the March issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry, is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it points to a new location containing genes that contribute to dyslexia. Second, the gene or genes at that location are involved in speed of decoding – changing written words into spoken words without clues to their meaning – a basic and persistent component of dyslexia.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 7119 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Reading is something most of us take for granted. But many people struggle everyday of their lives to read and understand simple words and phrases. "I avoided reading because I would have to read a sentence over and over and still not understand what I read," explains Dee Register from Kernersville, North Carolina, who wasn't diagnosed with dyslexia until she was in her early 40's. If left untreated, childhood dyslexia becomes an adult problem. "It's not something that's outgrown," says neurophysiologist Lynn Flowers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. "Ten percent of the child – and therefore the adult – population is affected by dyslexia to some degree," she says. "It isn't an all or nothing kind of disorder, it comes in shades as well." Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability that tends to run in families. "People without dyslexia process information in certain ways, in certain brain systems and certain neural pathways, and dyslexics do it differently and less efficiently," explains Judith Birsh, President of the New York branch of the International Dyslexia Association. People who suffer from dyslexia find it difficult to sort out the sounds within words, which make reading, writing and spelling very difficult. "If you’re stuck at the word-reading level and you’re laboring intensively over decoding [sounds], then you have nothing much left to work on comprehension and certainly you’re not going to speed along because you’re struggling along decoding the individual words," says Birsh. It can also have an affect on other aspects of a person's life such as short-term memory, mathematics and concentration. © ScienCentral, 2000-2005.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 7063 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Washington, DC – New findings from researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center in collaboration with Wake Forest University School of Medicine have shown that there is hope for individuals suffering a life-long history of reading problems. Using brain imaging technology the research group showed how the adult dyslexic brain responds to a specific phonological-based reading intervention program responsible for reading skill improvement. Published in the October 28 issue of the Journal Neuron, this is the first research study to examine the brain systems related to successful phonological-based instruction in dyslexic adults. "Reading is one of the most important skills we learn – it affects virtually every aspect of a person's life," said Dr. Guinevere Eden, associate professor of pediatrics, director of Georgetown University's Center for the Study of Learning, and lead author of the study. "Despite the fact that the majority of individuals with dyslexia are adults, little is known about the biological basis of how they can improve their reading skills. We need to understand the neural mechanisms behind these research-based reading instructions so that we can achieve a deeper understanding of precisely how these interventions work. Our findings suggest that the brain mechanisms used by adult dyslexics might be different from those observed when young children undergo remediation, a strong indication that there will never be a 'one size fits all' approach to helping dyslexics become proficient readers."

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 6335 - Posted: 06.24.2010

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Researchers in Italy have observed significant reductions of gray matter volume in areas of the brain associated with language processing among people with a family history of dyslexia in comparison with controls with no reading problems. Published in the August 24 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology, the study also lends support to previous studies suggesting intensive reading therapy activates areas of the brain necessary for word de-coding. The study of 10 people with familial dyslexia and 11 controls was the first to employ an advanced testing method – voxel-based morphometry (VBM) – which allows more in-depth detection and measurement of gray-white tissue volume and density differences than other testing tools, including magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. The brain is made up of gray matter, where the brain cells reside, and white matter, where the nerve tracts that allow connections between different parts of the brain and spinal cord reside. The study also was the first to account for variabilities in whole brain volume, age of the subjects and differences in brain shape. Each of the subjects with dyslexia had at least one close relative with either clinically evident dyslexia or a long history of reading problems.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 6017 - Posted: 06.24.2010

CHICAGO – Sights and sounds cross paths abnormally in the minds of dyslexic readers, according to the first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of multisensory processing in people with the disorder. "Dyslexic readers appear to process auditory and visual sensory cues differently than do normal readers, and these differences may be the cause of their difficulty in reading," said the study's lead author, Jonathan H. Burdette, M.D., assistant professor of neuroradiology and associate in the department of bioengineering at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. Dr. Burdette presented his research today at the 89th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Dyslexia is a learning disability characterized by difficulty with word recognition. Up to 8 percent of American elementary school children may have the reading disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. While the underlying neurological basis for dyslexia is still unclear, previous studies have shown that people with dyslexia cannot distinguish the sounds in spoken words. However, reading is a complex mental task, requiring a series of interactions among areas of the brain that control auditory, visual, language and memory processing.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 4635 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Imaging studies yield a potential core marker for reading problems, underscore neurological basis of difficulties WASHINGTON — Researchers have additional evidence that reading problems are linked to abnormal sound processing, thanks to high-precision pictures of the brain at work. In a recent study, when children without reading problems tried to distinguish between similar spoken syllables, speech areas in the left brain worked much harder than corresponding areas in the right brain, whose function is still unknown. But when children with dyslexia made the same attempt, those right-brain areas actually worked harder, going into overdrive after a brief delay. These findings appear in the October issue of Neuropsychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA). Psychologists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston targeted the suspect brain areas by isolating speech-processing sites from sites involved with other aspects of language, such as memory and meaning. As a result, they believe their research contributes to the identification of a central marker of the deficit that makes it hard for people with dyslexia to process similar but different sounds –- in both spoken and written form. The results parallel prior evidence gathered by the Houston team that brains of children with dyslexia also respond abnormally during reading. The researchers studied the brain activity of 12 children with and 11 children without dyslexia during a simple speech perception task. The children were eight to 12 years old. Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive, high-resolution form of functional imaging, highlighted precise activity in participants’ left and right temporoparietal (TP) language areas while the children discriminated between spoken pairs of syllables, such as /ga/ and /ka/. This kind of task, known as phonological processing, is fundamental to acquiring reading skill. The temporoparietal areas are on the surface in the back of the brain. © 2003 American Psychological Association

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 4425 - Posted: 06.24.2010

St. Paul, MN –After only three weeks of reading instruction, brain scans in children with dyslexia develop activation patterns that match those of normal readers, according to a new study published in the July 22 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology. These findings indicate that children with dyslexia use the same regions of their brains as other readers, and that specialized instruction can rapidly compensate for some types of reading deficits. Dyslexic children in this study had above average intelligence but scored approximately 30 percent lower than average on standard reading tests. The dyslexic children and a group of good readers of the same age underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map their brain activation patterns during two types of reading tests. The children with dyslexia then received a three-week training program based on principles outlined by the National Reading Panel (www.nationalreadingpanel.org), convened by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Both groups of children then underwent a second brain scan. The experiment was conducted during the summer, to avoid confounding effects from school instruction.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 4090 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Was Orton right? Washington, DC – Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study brain activity in children, researchers today confirmed part of an eighty-year-old theory on the neurobiological basis of reading disability, and shed new light on brain regions that change as children become accomplished readers. Their findings were reported in the May 18 online publication of the journal Nature Neuroscience. In 1925 Dr. Samuel Orton, a clinician and prominent dyslexia researcher, hypothesized that normally developing readers suppress the visual images reported by the right hemisphere of the brain because these images could potentially interfere with input from the left. Advanced technology allowed researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center to discover that children do in fact "turn off" the right side of the visual parts of the brain as they become accomplished readers. This confirms an aspect of Orton's theory--born out of observations of individuals with reading disability--is correct. For the first time, they also were able to demonstrate that different phonological skills relate to activity in different parts of the brain when children read. Phonological skills allow readers to sound out words by correctly associating sounds with written symbols. They are critical for children learning to read and are often found to be impaired in children with developmental dyslexia.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 3816 - Posted: 06.24.2010

(NEWARK) – In a scientific first, researchers have shown that the brains of dyslexic children can be “rewired” through intensive remedial training to function more like those found in normal readers. Paula Tallal, Board of Governors Professor of Neuroscience at Rutgers-Newark, and other members of a multi-university research team used brain-imaging scans of dyslexic children to demonstrate that areas of the brain critical to reading skills became activated for the first time and began to function more normally after only eight weeks of special training. In addition, other regions of the brain also lit up on the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans in a compensatory process that the dyslexics may have used as they learned to read more fluently. The researchers’ groundbreaking findings were published Feb. 24 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. The other authors include faculty from Stanford and Cornell universities, the University of California’s Los Angeles and San Francisco campuses, and one of the co-founders of Oakland-based Scientific Learning Corporation. © 2001, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 3513 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By REUTERS WASHINGTON, — American Indians and Alaska natives are more likely to smoke than any other group in the United States, with 40 percent of adults defined as smokers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week. People of Chinese descent were the least likely to smoke, with just 12 percent reporting that they had smoked a cigarette in the past month, said the agency survey, which was released on Thursday. The survey of 74,000 youths ages 12 to 17 and 133,000 adults is the agency's first detailed statistical breakdown by ethnicity of who smokes and who does not, said a spokesman, Joel London. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 4900 - Posted: 06.24.2010