NLD is a neurological disorder that originates in the right hemisphere of the brain. The reception of nonverbal or performance-based information controlled by this hemisphere is impaired to varying degrees, causing problems with visual-spatial, intuitive, organizational, evaluative and holistic processing functions.
The syndrome of nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD) consists of specific assets and deficits.
Assets include:
- Early speech and vocabulary development
- Remarkable memory skills
- Attention to detail
- Early development of reading fluency and excellent spelling skills
- Eloquent verbal ability
- Strong auditory retention
The three categories of deficits are:
- Motor: lack of coordination, problems with balance and graphomotor skills
- Visual-spatial-organizational: lack of imagery, poor visual memory, poor spatial perception, and difficulty with spatial relationships
- Social: inability to understand nonverbal communication, difficulty adjusting to transitions and new situations, and deficits in social judgment
People with NLD can be affected in each of the categories to varying degrees of severity, so each person with NLD has a unique clinical, behavioral and educational picture. People with NLD can be helped by many forms of therapy, but their world is filled with confusing sensory stimuli. For some, their physical endurance is challenged by generally low muscle tone. Some need lifelong support with cognitive and organizational skills, motor skill development, pragmatics and social skills. Children with NLD have advanced verbal and auditory memory. Some are precocious readers
with advanced vocabulary. Yet NLD is a language problem. People with NLD naturally have language skills, but when it comes to functional everyday language use, they have problems
with tone of voice, inference, written expression, facial expression, gestures and other areas of pragmatic speech.
People with NLD have difficulty understanding patterns and laying out columns of numbers. Spoken instructions can be difficult because of problems displaying sequential directions and poor visual memory. NLD can also affect coordination, causing clumsiness, poor balance and a tendency to fall. Many people with NLD have poor safety judgment. We are not sure what causes NLD, but we know that the earlier the intervention, the better the prognosis.
Treatment BeterKlinic
BeterKliniek is the clinic for Integrative Medicine that bridges regular and non-regular medicine.
An van Veen (physician) and Michael van Gils (therapist) look for the cause of a condition or disease. That is where the treatment starts otherwise, as people often say, it is 'carrying water to the sea'. We call this cause medicine. Sometimes it is also desirable to treat the symptoms (at the same time). We call this symptom medicine.
Chronic disorders often have their cause in epi- genetics. You can schedule a free informative telephone consultation (phone number 040-7117337 until 1 p.m.) at BeterKliniek to discuss your symptoms so that we can provide you with further advice.
