BrainTalks: Kenneth R. Pugh

Good reading skills are crucial for success in the modern world. Reading disability (RD) is characterized as a brain-based difficulty in acquiring fluent decoding skill, usually associated with problems in operating on the phonological structures of language. I will review research from our lab and others which indicates that atypically developing RD children fail to develop key left hemisphere brain “circuits” that, in typically developing (TD) readers, come online to support skilled reading. New discoveries on how genetic, neurobiological, and environment factors impact early language development and later reading outcomes will be discussed in this context. I will also present an overview of the latest research from our lab on the brain-basis of treatment and remediation of language and reading difficulties (in multiple languages), including new research using multi-modal brain imaging during learning with the larger goal of tailoring instruction to individual differences in brain organization

Dr. Kenneth R. Pugh has served for 16 years as the Director of Research at Haskins Laboratories, and currently holds academic appointments as a Professor in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of Connecticut, and as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Yale Child Study Center. His research program falls primarily in two broad domains: cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics. Pugh's pioneering research employs combined behavioral and neurobiological measures and genetic information in the study of typical and atypical reading and language development, with a particular focus on learning and plasticity in disabled readers, including those with dyslexia.

He served as a member on a number of the Scientific Advisory Boards including the International Dyslexia Association for 15 years, as well as the Scientific Advisory Panel for Dyslexia International in Paris, and as a corresponding member of the Rodin Remediation Academy in Stockholm. He is currently a member of the Board of Visitors for the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, the Scientific Advisory Council for the Child Mind Institute in New York, and the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute, among others. Dr. Pugh served as a Member of the Language and Communications Study Section at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and also served as a member of the “Committee on the Learning Sciences: Foundations and Applications to Adolescent and Adult Literacy” at the National Research Council of the National Academies. In 2017, Dr. Pugh received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) MERIT Award from the National Child Health and Human Development Council Award. This award recognizes outstanding contributions to science with sustained NIH funding. In May 2019 Dr. Pugh received an Honorary Doctorate degree in Psychology from the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland.