IM is all about timing. MRI's show the basal ganglia is exercised in IM by Dr. Neal Alpiner, here.
The Basal ganglia may play significant roles in various conditions that interfere with a child's ability to learn. Dr. C George Boeree discusses some here including sending messages to the frontal lobe where our higher level reasoning processes occur as well as informing us when something is not right and that we should do something about it (wash your hands or lock the door.) Over activity in certain areas may be connected with obsessive compulsive disorder, and underactive areas may be involved in ADD, depression or just plain lethargy. Recently they have discovered connections to a loss of motivation in an area of the basal ganglia. Yet another part of the basal ganglia appears to be involved in coordination of automatic movements and may account for symptoms of Tourette's syndrome. Finally another area of the basal ganglia is believed to involve the reward circuits. The basal ganglia are critical structures for many very human behaviors. My mind logically leads me to think that this, exercising the basal ganglia, may indeed be a means by which IM helps people improve focus and attention, be more 'reasonable', become more cognitively flexible, and even lessen tics - all gains I have seen frequently in students I've trained.
Read more about the basal ganglia here, here and here as they are discovering that the shape of the basal ganglia is different for many high functioning autistic children and "may therefore prove valuable in identifying neuroanatomic biomarkers of autism."
