Children who have a Traumatic Brain Injury typically go through a course of rehabilitation. It seems that although there are clusters of similarities in these patients, there are rarely ever 2 that exhibit the exact same difficulties after their injury. I met a 7 year old who had fallen off of a truck, and had suffered a TBI. He required surgery to repair a hole in his skull from the fall. This little guy received OT, PT and speech for a year in an intensive program and did very well. One year post his accident, he was demonstrating great recovery in every area – walking with no support or braces, cognitively intact and able to complete 1^st grade work without assistance, speaking clearly and without difficulty. His last resulting effect was a left hemiplegia. His left arm dangled from his side and was non functional. This was very frustrating to him and to his family.

Holiday season, fun and games for some and overstimulation for others…

The holiday season is here and is packed with a frenzy of a million things to do like: gift-wrappings, relatives coming to town, meal preparations, and chaotic shopping. If you feel overwhelmed from this then imagine the potential effects on your child. Many parents of children with ADHD or Autism may be somewhat used to dealing with the effects of overstimulation. Under the right circumstances any child can be over stimulated.  Here at Interactive Metronome^® we want to wish you the best holiday season ever, and in order to facilitate that we have gathered some tips that could help you deal with overstimulation.

Check out these cool fonts!

ABC News recently posted an article by Carrie Gann, that talks about how some fonts could help people with dyslexia and other learning disabilities like APD and NVLD, better intake printed information. Christian Boer, the Dutch graphic artist who designed the font is dyslexic himself and fully understands the struggle that people go through when reading. Read the full article.

The Brain Clock:  The brain clock as a “jack-of-all-trades” brain mechanism that can be fine-tuned to improve human performance

In my inaugural IM-Home blog post (Brain Clock: My journey to understand the science of mental timing interventions), I concluded with the following statement:

“I am now convinced that the IM-effect is impacting a fundamental and critical cognitive mechanism (or set of mechanisms) involved in a wide array of human cognitive and motor performance domains.”

Cognitive and intelligence researchers have long sought for (and argued about) the “holy grail”of intelligence—an underlying core essence or mechanism that plays a role in most all intellectual and human performance situations.  It is typically referred to as g, or general intelligence.   The general consensus touches on the concept of neural efficiency.  Such a general mechanism or process is considered a domain-general cognitive mechanism as it works across multiple domains of human ability, or in other words...if you improve this one area of ability, it in turn improves several areas of ability in the same person like cognitive skills (focus, attention, memory), speech/language abilities (articulation, auditory processing, reading), and motor skills (coordination, gait, balance).   It works across multiple domains of human ability.  Some have referred to such general mechanisms...

Some children with cerebral palsy have great difficulty with coordination and timing. They may have difficulty with their fine motor skills, catching a ball or walking smoothly. In watching these wonderful kids over the years, I have noticed 2 things, (1) that their timing can be off when they try to perform coordinated tasks. For example when they work on their ball skills they close their hands too early or too late to catch/bounce the ball and (2) that they sometimes lack self confidence in their physical skills making them less likely to practice them. Many of these kids have been in therapy for their entire life, and then when they reach 10, 11, 12 years old they grow tired and weary of the typical weekly sessions of practicing the skills themselves. While practice of skills is definitely necessary, I think we are learning to go a step further to address the underlying issues of timing and coordination with the Interactive Metronome program. 

Mom came to me one afternoon, and in telling her story her eye’s teared up. She had phoned home from work one afternoon, and her daughter answered the phone! This was the first time that this had EVER happened! Mom was thrilled as she was able to ask her daughter questions and have them answered. She also noticed that her daughter was much more interested in going to school and church functions. She actually asked to invite a classmate over for a play date. Read the full story

Ann is 14 and diagnosed with Dyslexia, she also was a sub-performing athlete, lacking some basic stamina skills of other kids in her team. After IM therapy Ann not only improved significantly with her reading scores, she also improved considerably as an athlete and performed better in both her lacrosse and cheerleading team. Read the full story.

"Gary" is a 39 year old male with a diagnosis of C4 quadriplegia, onset 12/04 when he was struck in the back. His initial symptoms included mid back pain which quickly progressed to right foot numbness, then loss of sensation to both legs up to the chest level. "Gary" underwent decompression and fusion. At discharge "Gary" was independent with all self-care activities, including showering and dressing, all wheelchair transfers, meal preparation, laundry, dishes, and house cleaning. He gets in and out of his home independently, which requires three steps to enter with bilateral hand rails. Read his amazing story!

Pat could independently complete Wii Fitness activities, she had increased attention span, improved thought process and concentration, the ability to multi-task, improved reading comprehension and improved balance. Because Pat made significant gains and her functional status improved dramatically she was discharged from therapy.

Bob is now able to use his right arm to feed himself, write his name legibly, make a sandwich, dial the phone and tie his shoes. Bob’s therapist recently ran into him at a high school swim meet. He gestured to her to climb up high in the bleachers to join him where they “caught up” on all of his latest activities!