Question: does children with disabilites have a different brain to us or i9s it they just function differently than ours ???]

Jen Todd Jones answered on 19 Mar 2013:

Hi tilly!

Sometimes children or adults with disabilities may have a different brain to someone without a disability – but there are lots of different kinds of disabilities with different effects in the brain. If someone has a physical disability this may well be because the motor or movement area of the brain (about half way back along the head at either side) has not developed correctly while they were in the womb or growing as a young child – or they may have ‘acquired’ this in an accident or after an illness. There are those with learning disabilities and this may be a general problem for the brain with some problems in the frontal lobe (just above your eyes on either side) which means problems with planning. Even dyslexia can be considered a disability and we’re still not entirely sure what’s happening in the brain for those people – another one of the great unanswered questions in science!

Really having a different brain means different function, but it’s important to think about which effects which – is it that they have a different brain so function is different, or their different function means their brain has changed to be different? This is an important idea in science, being sure of which thing effects the other and in what direction.

Jen