What is Developmental Delay Syndrome (DDS)?
DDS is the name given to the collection of the following symptoms: dyslexia, dyspraxia, tourette’s syndrome of childhood, ADD, ADHD and OCD.
New research shows that these are only symptoms. They never appear alone but rather in a pattern of co-morbidity, which we call a syndrome. This means that a child will always have more than one of these symptoms and present in their own unique way.
The underlying problem is an immaturity in the brain due to the delayed development of special brain cells that only appear four months after birth.
These specialised nerve cells are Von Economo neurones. They are found in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. These areas deal with:
- Fine motor control like writing, painting and using tools.
- Concentration and problem solving
- Memory ( mostly short term or working memory but partly long term memory too)
- Organising, anticipating / thinking ahead and forward planning
- Motivation and understanding long term gains
- Recognising and controlling emotions / behaviour
- Social skills
- Understanding and using language
- Abstract thinking
The brain is divided into a right and a left hemisphere. The cerebral hemisphere on one side is functionally related to the cerebellum
on the other side, that is, the right cerebral hemisphere ‘talks to’ the
left cerebellum. Therefore a decline in activity or maturation of one cerebral
hemisphere or prefrontal cortex will cause problems functionally with the
opposite cerebellum.
This is called diaschisis and is defined as a physiological
decline in activity in a functionally related but distant part of the brain.
Quite often the cerebellar signs and symptoms overshadow the symptoms generated by the prefrontal cortex (very front of the brain). These cerebellar symptoms include:
- Poor balance
- Poor co-ordination
- Clumsiness
- Being accident prone
- Car sickness
- Poor sporting ability
During our assessment/examination we include various cerebellar tests to build up a clinical picture of the extent of developmental delay and its severity.
