How Reading and Literacy Shape Early Childhood Development through Clinical and Computational Neuroscience
Ayan Mitra, Ph.D. is an atypical student of education and neuroscience. His passion is neuroscience, and he came to the University of South Carolina with an interesting research goal. He sought to understand how the nursery rhymes of childhood stick so well in our minds throughout our lives. By integrating neuroscience, neuroimaging and education, Mitra was able to work between the College of Education and Department of Psychology to create a doctorate that achieved his goals. His post-doctoratal studies included magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), transcranial magnetic stimulations (TMS), dyslexia and reading, where he championed two new neuroimaging modalities at the BrainLENS Laboratory affiliated with the University of Connecticut, University of California, San Francisco and the Brain Imaging Research Center (BIRC). He is currently a clinical research manager and scientist at Harvard Medical School. Mitra works in a dual role that bridges neurology research between the Harvard Medical School and their affiliated hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
“What excited me about this position is that it intersects management and research,” says Mitra. “I’m housed in the department of neurology and get to work between two clinical research and operations teams with a focus on sleep medicine, epilepsy, and Alzheimer's disease and understand how the brain works.”
Before coming to the United States, Mitra studied how the brain learns rhymes. He was especially interested in learning disorders and how the brain processes information. This part of his research needed someone who specialized in literacy, reading, writing and a deep understanding of United States school systems. Because his data was primarily based in the United States, he needed to find a doctoral program here that would enable this research. He needed a member of the education faculty willing to take on the challenge of this work — he found that in education professor, Lucy Spence, Ph.D.
“I needed a faculty member who was daring enough to reach beyond their area of expertise,” Mitra says. “My supervisor, professor Spence, was not scared of a challenge. Even though she had no background in neuroscience, she was always interested in the brain. She was willing to support a student who wanted to understand the minds of children and how that could inform instructional and literacy development. That was a big leap of faith for her.”
Not only did faculty and staff in the College of Education embrace Mitra and his work, but his co-supervisor Professor Scott Decker in psychology championed him, as well. Decker helped envision the project, and Mitra’s committee members from various fields brought different perspectives. Professor Angie Baum’s background in early childhood development, Spence’s expertise in language and literacy, former faculty member Michele Myers’ experience with classroom instruction, and Decker’s clinical and computational neuroscience all contributed to Mitra’s success.
“We created a symbiotic relationship that informed my project’s rubric,” Mitra says. “They were totally different than what I thought I needed. I came in very rigid, but these faculty were genuinely interested and appreciative of my work.”
Mitra admits that Spence had to upskill and acquire new knowledge in the neuroscience domain to successfully advise him on his work. She had to be conversant in neuroscience to understand my writing. Similarly, Decker had to build his knowledge around educational practices.
“Both of them became gatekeepers for me,” says Mitra. “I was able to look at reading dyslexia and quantitative electroencephalography (EEGs), a neuroimaging science that I currently specialize in.”
Mitra’s passion for neuroscience began during his master’s studies. He was working on a project related to nursery rhymes and studied reconstructing language and narrative from a psychological or brain-based perspective. He sought to understand how rhymes were taught throughout the ages, and why even after 40 years of not being exposed to them, people still remember them by heart.
“When is the last time you read Humpty Dumpty,” questions Mitra. “Without any practice, most of us can recite them at any time. Compare that to a book you recently read. How many of us could recite a paragraph after more than a day?”
These questions led to an understanding of how brains process information differently. Mitra began to use this understanding to develop theories about how one could help children improve their literacy skills. Much like “if you give a mouse a cookie…” Mitra then wanted to learn how to help children who might need more than a traditional approach — children with learning differences or difficulties. This led to researching these differences from a neuroscientific perspective, including biomarkers and neuroimaging.
“I wanted to see what was happening in the brain and how that correlates to different types of instruction,” says Mitra. “This information could be useful not only for neuroscientists or surgeons, but physicians, teachers and parents.”
Mitra found that certain texts are more attractive to various regions of the brain. Texts with a phonological aspect, like rhymes or songs, tend to grab the brain’s attention more effectively. These concepts are also related to how one contextualizes language and which parts of the brain are “activated.” Mitra shares that brain “activation” is still an area of study with many unknowns, but in laymen’s terms, parts of the brain respond better to types of instructional practices.
“It could be the engaging voice of a teacher, or cultural values of a child’s home or familial association, that activates areas of the brain,” says Mitra. “It’s a networked activity, not an isolated point. Think of learning more as a mesh. It’s not as black and white as one would think.”
Mitra hopes that his work will bring together educators and neuroscientists to improve instruction in the future. He also hopes to prove scientifically what many teachers know to be effective but is understudied. This belief has recently culminated in a book, Educational Neuroscience for Literacy Teachers, from Routledge, that he co-wrote with Spence.
“Teachers have been doing all the right things,” says Mitra. “Their years of experience is why children learn anything at all. I hope to provide the neuroscientific basis for their work so we can better understand the why.”
Mitra’s post-doctoral work also focused on dyslexia and reading difficulties, or the neurodevelopmental field. His ambition is currently transitioning to the neurodegenerative space. Much of this research hopes to develop medication to slow cognitive decline in aging. He is currently leading a clinical research and operations team that study neurodegeneration and sleep disorders. His dual appointment allows him to continue exploring his expertise in EEG, to study epilepsy and sleep disorders and simultaneously manage clinical trials/research. This thirst for knowledge and goal of creating a bird’s eye understanding of neurology powers Mitra in his work.
“The essence of a Ph.D. and research is having a genuine question that pains you as long as you don’t know the answer,” says Mitra.
Mitra specifically wants to thank his university family who supported him during his studies. Michelle Bryan led his Holmes Fellowship and became a mentor. Her words stick with him today, “If you go in a doctoral degree having a very set plan, and come out exactly as you expected, you did not do it right.” Additionally, people like retired faculty and staff Paul Chaplin and Margo Jackson at the College of Education were great resources, who helped him on his journey. He shares that College of Education staff member, Gwen Lorinovich, was always there as a listening ear. To Professor Spence, “she was a pillar of my success. I want to embody her leadership style in my life.” Mitra shares, “This village that put me where I am. I owe my success to them, everyone who put in the work to make someone who is an ordinary student able to achieve. I can’t thank them enough.”