“Recently I collaborated with Sarah Day, Dr Thuy and Leah Paice to create an outline and some learning materials for the upcoming subject, Functional Neuroanatomy, in the Bachelor of Speech and Language Therapy (NNTL) at Da Nang.
Most speechies who work with adult patients, as I do, tend to know their neuroanatomy and neuroscience pretty well because we use those principles in our work every day.
But I can tell you it was a whole other learning opportunity delving back into these topics to create what we hope will be a relevant and well structured subject for the NNTL students.
It’s one thing to know the neuroanatomy in a practical sense, but quite another to specify and justify the anatomical details and physiological principles of how speech, language, voice and swallowing work – and how to communicate those things to students so that they can apply their knowledge in clinical practice.
To design the subject’s framework, I piled up some textbooks for bedtime reading, that specifically relate to the neuroscientific and neuroanatomical bases of our work in speech therapy. In all that reading, it felt like going back to study all over again.
In fact, it was incredibly stimulating to rediscover long-held tenets, and read in much more detail, backed up by the latest research. I was also reminded of many unusual neurological facts. For example, did you know that if you lightly scratch your ear in a certain place, it can make you cough? The neural sensitivity that causes the cough reflex is also stimulated by a small portion of the outer ear: the tenth cranial nerve known as the vagus (from the Latin word to wander) travels widely.
I knew that the pile of books would be useful for the NNTL lecturers and students, so I sent them over to Da Nang, thanks to Dr Natalie Munro and then Prof Lindy McAllister who both graciously made space in their suitcases for the hefty 7kg or so on their respective trips: Albury to Sydney, to Ho Chi Minh City, and then to Da Nang.”