A new therapy, called Interactive Metronome, uses a steady beat to help improve cognitive and motor skills, and help amputees such as Frederick Davis of St. Petersburg to walk again.

By Dorothy Foltz-Gray 

An interactive natural remedy treatment helps calm a boy with ADHD.  

Last year, Aaron Davis, now 10, was picked as a class project leader, charged with keeping four of his classmates on task. The irony wasn’t lost on his parents, Brenda and Richard of Topeka, Kan.: Just two years ago, a simple command like “turn off the computer” was impossible for their son, diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) after he started kindergarten.

Many of you are already familiar with Dr Kevin McGrew. You’ve read his intriguing and elucidating blog posts and you know he is affectionately referred to as The Time Doc because of his incessant interest (et..em, obsession ?) with any and all things related to mental timing. You may also know that his unique curiosity has lead to a vast collection of literature contained at one of his many blogs, The Brain Clock Blog. Dr McGrew’s singular effort to bring together and collectively analyze the existing literature has contributed greatly to our understanding of the role of temporal processing in various human abilities and medical conditions and how interventions like the Interactive Metronome may be improving the resolution, synchronicity, and performance of our internal clock...

Ten fingers and ten toes

As a new mother, you have hopes and dreams for your child. You hope your child will be delivered with ten fingers and ten toes. You hope your child will cry, giggle and burp. You hope he or she will crawl, walk and eventually run. You even dream your child will grow up to be happy, healthy and successful.
But as we know for some mothers, our biggest fear is that all that our child will ever be is just a hope and a dream.

Ten fingers, ten toes, one diagnosis: autism

Within one month of Robin’s birth we knew something was not right. In 1971, my husband and I rejected institutional placement for our infant daughter who was recently diagnosed as severely disabled and later with classic (severe) autism. The doctor said to us, “…as long as she’s progressing, be thankful…any progress she might make in childhood will regress as an adult.” Scared and in disbelief, we chose not to accept his negative diagnosis - we chose not to believe the limited potential of our daughter.

At the earliest stages of Robin’s autism, my husband and I overcame our first challenge - we just wanted to stop the wild screaming, rocking and self-injurious behaviors. We did not know if she could develop beyond what we saw...

Molly, a 10-year-old 5th grader, had a recent diagnosis that included ADHD, and she was said to be showing signs of High Functioning Autism. Molly’s mother noticed that her daughter would regularly forget things at home and school, and was unable to keep her belongings organized. She had trouble focusing, and even doing the smallest amount of homework was a daily battle. When a school test was over, she would regularly forget most of what she had worked so hard to learn.

As Molly moves into her junior high school years, she would be required to memorize more writing and reading, and Molly’s mother was anxious that she could only spend limited time assisting Molly with her studies. She wondered how her daughter would make her way through this seemingly overwhelming challenge.

When Molly’s mother saw the Interactive Metronome (IM) website, she read the content with a certain level of suspicion and doubt, but as a parent who wanted to do whatever she could to help Molly and lessen her frustrations, she decided to give IM a try...

Families across the US are fighting ADHD and Autism with a personalized brain fitness program. The computer based program is called 'Interactive Metronome' and its video game like technology has helped one student go from special needs to top of his class.

Just a few years ago, Adam Solomon was struggling with a severe case of ADHD. Labeled a special needs student at school, he was often relegated to the corner of the classroom to be on his own.

His parents were met with a decision: provide medicinal treatment for their son or leave him in the state that he was in. Unhappy with the choices available to them, his parents opted for an alternative measure recommended by a friend...

Has your child ever had trouble concentrating on daily tasks? Although Mason Roach, a 6-year-old boy, was not diagnosed with ADHD, he still showed similar symptoms. Mason had trouble following through with simple tasks, such as taking a shower and brushing his teeth. His Mom came to Lisa Poe, OTR/L for help...

The media sums it up pretty well. This is from an article last Sunday in Central PA’s Patriot News:

When a head injury, disease or behavioral disorder disrupts that carefully synchronized brain clock, everything from breathing and body movements to intellect and emotion can be undermined. But a relatively new therapy known as Interactive Metronome has restored the internal timepiece in the brain of many patients with autism, cerebral palsy, ADHD, stroke, traumatic brain injury and other cognitive disorders.

A Brain-based Approach for ADHD and LD

Donna Abler, a holistic occupational therapist, is accepting summer registrations to help children overcome motor, behavioral and cognitive challenges associated with attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and learning disabilities (LD) through a natural, drug-free approach. Developed in the early 1990s, Interactive Metronome (IM) is a computerized, brain-based therapy tool that has gained national attention as a breakthrough intervention to support processing abilities in the brain, including language, motor and cognition skills. Its effectiveness is backed by clinical research...

Brain training helps Topeka child with ADHD

When Aaron Davis hears a beat his brain fires a reaction to his hands or his feet. When his parents, Richard and Brenda, see the mental to physical connection, they remember at one time the simple task was impossible. Richard says, "We get emotional. It's incredible, the difference."

A year ago, Aaron struggled in school, lacked social interaction, and seemed to be in a world of his own. Brenda says, "We were told he had a wheat allergy and he had a gluten allergy and to take all of that out of his diet. So we did that for a month and there was no improvement. Then we were told the natural food market has these wonderful vitamins and that will help. We tried that and nothing worked."

Doctors then told Richard and Brenda their son had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD. The solution: medication. But Richard says, "He was still struggling in school, he was still behind."

Nothing made Aaron better. Just when the family had given up all hope, a friend suggested Interactive Metronome. A program that retrains the brain. Doctors say IM uses a repetitive exercise that changes or remaps neurons in a certain part of the brain resulting in a change in behavior. Brenda says, "The first time he went to IM, that night, we already saw...