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. 

Functional Neurology

A new name for IM training, at least functionally this is what is happening during IM training. If you watch this trailer, you will see one of the therapies being used is indeed IM. A must see video for all my parents.

Hope Restored: Functional Neurology Serves Humanity from Unseen Line Films on Vimeo.

Dealing with finicky eaters

I found this slide show today... pretty good I think, for all finicky eaters, not just Aspies.

Living On Thin Air: How to Get Your Asperger Kid to Eat a Healthy Diet

View more presentations from Nancy Mucklow.

Brushing and Joint Compression

IM trains the brain with in time and space, but a few of the students that I see have sensory systems that can slow IM training down if not addressed. In house I will do a variety of activities to help calm excited sensory systems in order to move forward with our training. Brushing with joint compression is one that I will share with you here.

Weak Right Hemisphere or NLD

Your child's brain is marvelous, fascinating and has TWO hemispheres - both hugely important. Some times I will notice weakness in one or the other hemisphere during IM training. Extreme right brain hemisphere weakness can sometimes be seen in attention issues, understanding the big picture, and what is often referred to as non verbal learning difficulties. Here you'll find one of the best descriptions I've found of what this looks like in a child.  A must read if I've said your child has a weak right hemisphere. Note - not all children will have all of these symptoms - some may have very few, but typically the right hemisphere is in charge of these mental processes.

Toe Walking

Persistent Toe Walking may be a sign of neurological challenges. Many of the students that I see have a history of toe walking. Here are some links to check out on the subject.

Sensory Diet Link for Squirrelly Behavior

Can you give me a general idea of “squirrelly” ? Extreme silliness maybe? Emotional?  During IM, a good percentage of students have a day or two of 'squirrelly behavior, some times a week or two, worse case senario, the entire IM training, but this fades in a few weeks after IM is over.

Body In Space Issues are Related Too

Body in Space Issues May be Related to Conscious and Subconscious processing: You learned your own body in space as a toddler, but you can get a feel for the concept of 'body in space' better if you remember what it felt like when you learned to drive. When you first went behind the wheel, you spent most of your energy just thinking about body in space issues - whether you were in the middle of your lane, where was the gas and the brake, did you have enough room to pass around that parked car, etc. The car became an extension of your body. Simple body in space awareness took your conscious thought.

A New Beginning

I was visiting with my 24-year-old son, Brad, today. We were talking about what were our greatest life joys and losses - an engaging and insightful topic. Great discussion for tonight's dinner table....

When asked about his childhood, Brad again disconnected himself from his childhood saying something like, "I don't think of my childhood as me." Plain and simple. That wasn't me. This is about the fourth time I've heard him say with very honest and true feelings that he does not feel connected with his past. Of course we went on to talk about how your past absolutely is a part of you but doesn't have to define who you are now. Given that, he sincerely does feel like he started a new life, a new beginning - 7 years ago now, with his first IM training!

Emma's Story - IM and the Very Young Child

Last year at our IM conference we were able to watch some video of an AMAZING story of a little 18 month old girl who was the first infant documented to receive IM training. Her gains were absolutely phenomenal. I was recently visiting with a mom about the gains I've seen with preschoolers - wonderful gains - and Emma's story came up. I thought I would link to it. Even if you don't have an infant needing IM, it's a great story of success. A baby, never thought to be able to even sit up by herself or functionally talk, now is in preschool walking with a walker and working on gaining language skills every day.

Occasionally I have parents that note changes immediately - after just one IM session. It seems so bizarre, but I hear comments enough that I know they are happening. Emma laughed for the first time after her first IM session. When listening to this mom speak, it seemed as if almost every session brought on a new behavior.

A word of caution: When I share such things, parents sometimes get the idea they will see gains in one day. That's the exception, not the rule, but when it happens, it's so exciting!

To read Emma's story , click the blue link, then on the Most Recent Posts link, then the search button. On the 10th question down on this page you can read the story (You'll see "18 month old" at then end of the title). I expect it won't be located there long as it's a 'recent post'. I was hoping I could link right to the story but no such luck.

The Motor Cortex of the Brain

A good video showing the sensory motor parts of the brain that IM tasks work, one of many regions worked. When you focus on hand movement, leg movement, trunk or hip movement, you build a different neuro-network.

How do we get from intention to action?

How is it that we intend to not eat that chocolate, yet when it appears before us, we drop it into our mouths? What is intention's connection to action? Dr. Ann Graybiel's UC Davis MIND Institute's October, 2008 Distinquished Presenter discusses this question. During her 6 pm presentation, my mind was firing wildly on how this new research is deeply connected to IM. The Basal Ganglia, shown by Dr. Neil Alpiner to be one of the deep structures in the brain activated by IM, has long been known to be the area of release and inhibition of movement.

Why do some children blame?

"Sensory integration and sensory processing problems distort perceptions."" Pg 247 of Patricia Stacey's book, the boy who loved windows. Read more on the previous posts.

I agree. Sensory processing issues including timing issues often correlate with altered perceptions. Many children with poor timing tend to blame, a form of denying ownership. Post IM I almost always hear of some gain in the child's ability to take ownership. "He said he was sorry." "She said it was her fault, etc." In my experience, there seems to be a direct connection between timing and ownership. These children actually experience the world so differently, perceive so differently, that their reality is distorted. You and I may be able to clearly see the connections; they cannot. In truth, we all perceive the world differently, because all of our sensory systems are different. But with poor timing, this can become problematic.

In house, a common timing issue that a child might have is to clap consistently about 100 ms too soon. He will even tell me with wholehearted sincerity, "I think the computer is wrong. I am clapping right on the beat and it says I'm too fast." He blames the computer for his error. He perceives the world his way! Even adults will tell me this in house. --It's one of the behaviors I find comical. I tell them to remember what that feels like, because in just a couple of days, they won't think the computer is wrong any longer. But, at first--in the reality they live in at that time--the computer is wrong!

Imagine a child with impulse to be early (a timing issue) on the baseball field. He's poised and ready to hit the ball. He's impulsive by nature and his swing is 100 milliseconds (ms) too fast. He wouldn't swing too fast if he believed the swing was going to be 'too fast'. He swings too fast because that's where he believes the ball actually will be at that moment in time. Typically, children do try to hit the ball!

This is how his day may go: The boy swings at the ball. The ball goes foul. The coach says, 'slow down'. Now remember, the boy's perception of time is skewed so when he "slows down", he would have to aim "too late" in his mind to hit the ball. Even when consciously slowing down, he's probably going to swing too fast. If he is able to reject his own perception and slow down, he will have no idea when in that late area he should hit the ball, after all, in his perception the ball is already past him. It will be a shot in the dark for him. Next time he's up to bat, he swings too fast again.

The coach, with a little frustration now, says, "Slow down!" Because the coach's timing is fairly accurate, he perceives real time better. The boy, also flustered from trying his hardest and still failing, responds "It's not me. It's those kids yelling over there." In the boy's perception, he's already tried slowing down, but that didn't work; that wasn't the answer. --What else could it be? He chooses something that makes sense to him. In his past, distractions have caused problems. It makes sense. He doesn't take ownership of his own actions, because his perception is different from yours and mine. He sees the world differently. We often say these children march to their own drumbeat. And they do! Sensory processing issues as well as poor timing can cause altered perception.

Mind and Body Connection

"I was learning the new discoveries of brain development, the very foundations of intelligence. I had... mistakenly believed that the body was somehow inferior to the mind. Using Greenspan's developmental approach, I quickly understood that the brain depends on the body for its breadth of knowledge. By moving through space, we integrate with the world. Movement stimulates brain function. Time and again, Arlene (her son's OT) went straight to the body and its movements to help stimulate the nerve impulses that build mental pathways." This passage from Patricia Stacey's book, the boy who loved windows, describes very well the concept that by impacting the body through IM, you are also impacting the mind. She refers to Dr. Stanley Greenspan's floortime intervention that she used for her son's sensory integration issues. Dr. Stanley Greenspan wrote an article about Rhythm and Timing in the Early Childhood Today magazine a few years ago and discussed what was then some new Interactive Metronome research. Check it out.

Here's a quote from Dr. Greenspan about IM. "The Interactive Metronome provides a long needed and important educational and learning approach to improve a number of critical foundations in the learning process."
Stanley L. Greenspan, MD
leading child psychiatrist

"If you want to improve one system, go in through another," he (Greenspan) said, "If you want Walker (Patricia Stacey's little boy) to learn a word, you must use the body to teach it." "Remember" he said, "it's by moving that we come to understand space. You understand concepts by looking and doing at the same time, not by reading." pg. 214 of the boy who loved windows

Sensory Integration Insights

In a recent book I read, the boy who loved windows, author and mother Patricia Stacey has some great insight into sensory integration issues. With a dedication only a mother can give, Patricia was able to turn around the direction her son Walker was heading, giving hope to those facing autism. I'll share a couple quotes.

Pg 35: "Imagine your sensory world scrambled and unregulated, your auditory intake an incessant rock station--- or worse, mere static--- blasting in your ears. Imagine your kitchen light as bright as a searchlight, boring into your corneas every time you turn it on. Imagine yourself in clothes so irritating that they seem lined with metal scraping brushes. Imaging walking past a woman wearing a spritz of Chanel No. 5 that leaves you disoriented and dizzy. This can be the works of sensory integration dysfunction."
Expressed that way makes me feel sorry for our Brad who at 4 would curl up in a ball and cover his ears during gym class, at 8 could be coaxed into wearing soft clothes only, and for years ate so few mostly carbohydrate foods.

Pg 85:
"If we close our eyes, do we know where our hands lie or move? Our toes? Some individuals don't. I have often wondered what a profound proprioceptive deficit feels like -- a kind of swimming, a floating world, where the self evade itself, like water through a sieve."

"Within the proprioceptive sense there exists a sense of one's relationship to moving bodies-- the particular sense of one body's relationship to another body in space. Thus, the proprioceptive sense determines, in some sense, the negotiation of relationships as well. Arlene explained that Walker was spending so much time trying to figure our where he was-- a sense that come to us through the joints and muscles--- that he couldn't quite know where we were."
This could very likely be the explanation for Brad's lack of interest in relating to his peers as a child. His brain was too full simply taking care of his own relationship to the world in time and space, how could he focus on others?! IM helped him define his own body with in time and space. Immediately, he began being able to connect with others! Pre IM he labels his life as social-less. Post IM his social life began.

"Sensory described what came into the organism. Motor described what came out. They were the alpha and omega of the nervous system, and nearly every letter in between.Quite simply, taken together, they represent most of what the brain did." pg 214

We have sensory processing issues at times, too. "When the average person is ill, the brain and sensory system, absorbed with healing itself and managing pain, has difficulty tolerating 'normal' amounts of stimulation. The body and neurological system are already overloaded by the illness and like a computer given too much information to process too quickly, need to shut down some systems. This is why people who are extremely nauseated, for instance, can't stand to be touched. When we're sick, we often experience bright lights as painful. Sensory integration and sensory processing problems distort perceptions." Pg 247 of Patricia Stacey's book, the boy who loved windows.

Page 216 has an amazing description of the body in time and space, too long to post. Our public library has this book and you can order books online with your library card. Check it out.