Video games are a multi-billion dollar industry. Every week, a new blockbuster comes out for Playstation or Xbox that is designed to pull users deep into a fantasy world filled with familiar characters, rewards and social accolades. But, can a 45 year old man playing the newest Madden title actually be helping his brain? Maybe. And so begins our series on video games and your brain.
This TBI Awareness Day enjoy a poem by one of our Providers, Wendy Harron. Wendy knows firsthand how TBI can change your life, but she hasn't let it slow her down. Check out Wendy's inspiring words!
Meet Tara Sherer, our Provider of the Month. Tara has been an educator for 30 years, and became a certified Interactive Metronome® (IM) Provider in order to provide a drug free option for students struggling in school. Now, she is helping children with ADD and ADHD succeed with the help of IM Universe.
Over the past decade there has been an explosion of brain training products in the marketplace. Although most of the industry’s pioneers are using brain training for clinical therapy, the success of sites like Lumosity.com is a clear sign that brain health is a growing field and the technology is becoming increasingly consumer friendly. As a leader in the field of brain health, Interactive Metronome (IM) is focused on providing practical and measurable gains in baseline brain function. We are proud to spotlight Mary Schlesinger, an IM Provider in Fairfax, VA. Mary was recently featured during a round table discussion on "The Resilient Brain" radio blog. Read more to find out about Mary's work with individuals with neurological deficits.
Meet our July Provider of the Month, Kate Ortman, from Brain Training of Maryland in Ellicott City. Learn why Kate turned to Interactive Metronome, why this ADD Life Coach is so excited to have IM Universe at her facility, along with how it helps her clients get just as excited and motivated to complete IM training!
by Paul Gilbert
Ben is a 12-year-old with ADHD, who used to have trouble in school. His grades were below average, and he was easily distracted, unable to remember much of the material taught in class. Ben struggled with homework assignments and studying for tests. He felt defeated, and was frustrated by his parents' attempts to get him to study harder. He put in the extra effort, but nothing seemed to help.
April 15, 2015
One minute we’re being told that brain training makes you smarter, and the next minute we’re told it’s all bogus. Confused? I don’t blame you. The research literature on brain training is confusing and even sometimes contradictory. This is the way of science. I believe, however, that there is hope in making sense of things if the field and the media can move beyond broad...
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...
That was my knee-jerk advice to friend and colleague, Dr. Gordon Taub, when he called me in 2004 to assess my interest in consulting on a “synchronized metronome tapping” (SMT) invention called Interactive Metronome (IM). IM was supposedly directed at improving the academic achievement of elementary school students. My skepticism was grounded on the fact that for many years in education (and special education in particular), non-academic interventions focused on remediating underlying cognitive deficits (e.g., psycholinguistic process training; visual-motor or spatial integration training; motor planning retraining) were subsequently found to be ineffective in improving reading, writing and math. Yes, performance could be improved on tests of the specific cognitive processes trained, but the results did not transfer to academic improvement in the classroom.
By the early to mid-1980’s non-academic cognitive process intervention programs had been debunked as ineffective for improving school achievement. It was from this skeptical lens that I offered Dr. Taub my advice. I went as far as telling Dr. Taub that I could not risk my professional reputation by being associated with yet another “magic bullet” claim for school learning, especially for “at risk” learners. The magic bullet lesson had been burned well into my school psychology psyche after...
