Movement quality gives important insight into mental processing!

Awesome new study that links MOVEMENT quality in mental processing issues, especially the ASD spectrum behavior! When I ask your child to 'make circles' I've always known how they make these circles  is important. Here's an article to help you the parent know that too! Micromovements hold hidden information about severity of autism,

Attentional Control to Self Awareness, to Self Compassion, to Other Compassion

I wrote a note to a mom this morning about her 10 yr old son who ended up in tears during a task today. Great family with wonderful children. Yet, he ended up in tears, overwhelmed by his own thoughts (ANTs - automatic negative thoughts). He quietly kept clapping and trying to hide his emotion, hoping no one would notice the tears, but internally he was beating himself up, feeling HORRIBLE. Here's the post I wrote to this mom. I thought it was worth sharing with others.

Brad and I share his story at the National IM conference... what an honor! 

Emma' Story - IM with toddlers

IM with very young children. Given the right circumstance, IM is very much an option for the very young. Here's one story.

Cognitive Flexibility

Cognitive Flexibility is the ability to shift gears, a foundation human process that plays a role in an individual's ability to succeed. IM dramatically improves cognitive flexibility at all levels of functioning. Here are three video clips about this mental process.

A dad shares about how improved cognitive flexibility seen during IM training positively impacted his son's behavior.
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A teen in an elite private school. This video begins with some higher level IM tasks and then you'll hear the student and parent talk about the behavioral ramifications of improved cognitive flexibility.

Research is now being done on elite managers and what's happening in their brains that allows for top end cognitive flexibility that makes them the world's innovators. 

Why am I an IM Provider?

Dear Miriam,

I’m an IM provider because of students that fall through the cracks! You are my typical client.

Our son had learning challenges. As a young child every teacher in our small private school said he was too smart to hold back. Finally in 4^th grade, we pulled him out of private school and put him in public to have him fully evaluated. They said he was too high functioning as well. But he still struggled, so we went to Menninger’s ( when they were here), doctors, tutoring, I’m a special ed teacher so he was put through all the behavior programs I ever read about. I would say he ‘survived’ childhood for the most part, but definitely didn’t thrive ( he has said before that he has to grieve the loss of his childhood) Finally, as a senior in high school, we  found the IM program for him. Immediately his life changed. Since then, he’s gone on to THRIVE – first at K State, then at Rockhurst for his Master’s degree and now out in the work force receiving  great comments about his skills and abilities. He’s leading a happy full involved life – everything we ever dreamed of. But he missed out of 17 years of that fullness of life because his brain was imbalanced and disconnected. I am doing what I’m doing for children (and adults) like YOU – the ones that slip through the cracks, something is not working right. I say, the sooner the better but it’s NEVER too late. My oldest IM student to date is 72 years old J.

Lori

This was the response to a letter I received this morning from an adult who struggles. I very much liked my response, says it in a nut shell why I do what I do. Her letter exemplifies how continued struggles impacts an entire life, how hesitant and unsure you become when your timing/brain connectivity is less than what it should be. "What if you can't help me." I've felt that fear, looked for help everywhere. My hope is that IM offers many people in my world an opportunity for that fullness of life, opens up doors like it did for our son. Here's her letter, typos and all.

Dear Lori,

What if  I do the assment and come out that you can not provide me with any help? For this seems to be the case when I was in school.  I would take test to see if I qitify for the LR room and would always test to high for the LR room but, I still had problems in school.  Miriam (Name changed)

Synchronized Brain is Important

This is a collection of recent finds on the importance of synchronization with in the brain. This extremely significant mental process is where IM impacts the brain. 

Primitive Reflexes and Neurodevelopmental Spectrum Disorders

Dr. Martin Rukeyser speaks about primitive reflexes and how a failure of proper neural development can impact children with Neurodevelopmental disorders such as Autism, ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Asperger syndrome. 

7 yr old girl "Just doesn't want to put in the effort"

Take a look at this 7 yr olds pre and post IM self portraits. Note: at the beginning of IM last summer, her self portrait was fairly immature for a 7 yr old. You can often tell body awareness challenges through artwork. Here she's drawn a very thick neck and quite out of proportion, or was she trying to make arms? Either way, her sense of her own body seems somewhat vague. She is also missing some key parts usually drawn by seven year olds - arms, a nose, clothes. She has an adorable smile (a sign of internal contentment) - something we want her to keep!!!
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My Child is constantly making noises.

Last week I saw a student who's mom reported that her son is constantly making noises.

Brad's Insight - The GRRR feeling during meltdowns

Personal story.  People that know me know that I started this business because Interactive Metronome helped my own son tremendously. After years of searching for answers, IM was his answer. People also know I love to tell Brad stories, he's a miracle child (young adult now but I'm the mom so he will always be my child) and his story brings others great hope. IM parents who just happen to meet him love seeing the potential ahead for their own child.

For neurons to work as a team, it helps to have a beat

Berkley has published some very interesting research showing that rhythm throughout the brain may be as important as rhythm within individual areas of the brain. IM trains the brain rhythmically, each task synchronizing different areas of the brain.  Here's the article.

One analogy that this paper uses is: "It is like the radio communication between emergency first responders at an earthquake," Canolty said. "You have many people spread out over a large area, and the police need to be able to talk to each other on the radio to coordinate their action without interfering with the firefighters, and the firefighters need to be able to communicate without disrupting the EMTs. So each group tunes into and uses a different radio frequency, providing each group with an independent channel of communication despite the fact that they are spatially spread out and overlapping."

Amazingly low IM Scores

The scores you make on IM are huge indicators of your basic mental functioning, but they fall short in telling the whole picture. Yes, if a child comes in averaging over 100 ms, I know this child is working far harder than they need to in this world. Basic timing is a huge issue. But on the other end of the spectrum, some students can have AMAZINGLY low numbers and can still be lacking in some very basic mental processes. More IM can lead to significant mental processes still coming on line. The numbers don't tell the entire picture.

Brain Balance

Dr. Melillo has recently published an excellent book called Disconnected Kids.  His website  has a couple of wonderful videos on the right side of his website. I strongly encourage parents to make an effort to watch the second one, Dr. Melillo on Everyday with Marcus and Lisa.  Dr. Melillo covers key aspects of brain imbalance on this video.  As you watch the first video, KCAL9 Features Brain Balance,  you will notice that part of the brain balance program seems to implement Interactive Metronome.  At IM Focused, brain balance has for years been a focus of  IM training in addition to connecting various pathways and improving the timing and synchrony of the neuronal activity in each pathway.

Dyslexia - left hemisphere connectivity issue

"Vanderbilt University researchers Sheryl Rimrodt and Laurie Cutting and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and Kennedy Krieger Institute used an emerging MRI technique, called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), to discover evidence linking dyslexia to structural differences in an important bundle of white matter in the left-hemisphere language network.

Non Verbal Learning Disabilities behavior relationship to time and space

UC Davis MIND Institute has another great presentation. by Dr. Tony Simon titled Problems with Space and Time.....   Specifically this is about a specific population of children with spatio-temporal challenges. These children are often labeled as having Non Verbal Learning Disabilities, NVLD.

Though this research is not IM research, it shows that some challenges, often labeled as NVLD, are directly identified as weak resolution of time and space, the exact processing that IM impacts. Specific areas of the brain are implicated as well as networks with in the brain. Some of the areas of the brain that Dr. Simon mentions are the same sub-cortical brain areas that  MRI's have shown to be activated in IM including the cerebellum and the basal ganglia. He ends with the statement that "there is plenty of evidence that typical spatio-temporal systems are 'plastic' " and the we can 'fix' the problem. Practice and stimulation is what is needed to change and improve these processes.

Brain Connectivity and Autism

"One of the current hypotheses about the biological basis of autism is that individuals with autism differ in their patterns of brain connectivity.

How IM might impact sleep patterns and night terrors.

Washington University just published some fasinating research discussing how ones 'master clock', a specific region of the brain, helps us keep track of our 24 hour sense of time. This master clock seems to talk with various other 'clocks' with in our body.

My child has above average timing, now what?

Would you recommend IM if my son scored in the above average or superior range on his IM pretest?

Though it is true that the child's general timing is above average it's important to note that IM impacts more than timing. Quality of movement, connectivity in different brain regions, distractibility, and stamina are a few of the other significant factors to consider.

Can We Fine Tune Our Brain Clocks?

Dr. McGrew has a particularly infomative post about timing, a good overview of all research he's collected. Check it out. This image of timing in the brain I particularly like too. If you could draw a picture of what I believe IM can do in the brain, that is, line up those hills and valleys in our brains electrical signaing during sensory processing so as to 'calm' the storm or organize the brain, this might be what it looks like. Read his post. Great information.