Learning Breakthrough

A January article in the online Journal, Behavioral Medicine Report and a study published in the Journal “Nueron” describe new understandings about the synaptic connections that underlie what we commonly call "neuroplasticity.”

In an informative article, Study Shows Map of Brain Connectivity Changes During Development, Christophey Fisher, PhD, points to two important issues:

“Connected highways of nerve cells carry information to and from different areas of the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Scientists are trying to draw a complete atlas of these connections – sometimes referred to as the “connectome” – to gain a better understanding of how the brain functions in health and disease.”

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“Another surprise was that when growing dendrites go searching for potential partners, they reach out to axon boutons that had previously connected with other dendrites – “as if they were attracted to a restaurant that already has a line at the door, rather than trying a brand new one,” says Cline.”

These observations reinforce the work that Frank Belgau describes in Chapter 26 of his book A LIFE IN BALANCE. The Learning Breakthrough Program is based on Belgau’s model about the entrainment potential of synaptic responses (trainability). His design of a variable difficulty balance challenge combined with repetitive perceptual motor skills activities gives us a real world training tool to effect neuroplasticity changes.

For detailed technical information refer to Dynamic Formation of Functional Networks by Synchronization.

How juggling rewires your brain | COSMOS magazine.

PARIS: Neuroscientists have discovered that learning to juggle causes changes in white matter, the nerve strands which help different parts of the brain communicate with each other.

University of Oxford researchers recruited 48 healthy young adults who were unable to juggle and put them in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to get a cross-section map of their brain.

Half the volunteers then underwent a six-week training period to learn how to juggle, during which they were also encouraged to practice for 30 minutes a day.

At the end, they were all able to perform at least two cycles of the classic three-ball "cascade." They were then scanned again, as were their 24 non-juggling counterparts.

Among the juggling group, imaging showed important changes in white matter, the bundle of long nerve fibres that carry electrical signals between nerve cells and connect different areas of the brain. So-called grey matter consists of areas of nerve cells where the brain processes information.

The findings, published online on Sunday by Nature Neuroscience, are important, for they suggest the brain remains "plastic" - or mobile and adaptable - beyond childhood.

via How juggling rewires your brain | COSMOS magazine.

Neuroplasticity: The brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.

Brain reorganization takes place by mechanisms such as “axonal sprouting” in which undamaged axons grow new nerve endings to reconnect neurons whose links were injured or severed. Undamaged axons can also sprout nerve endings and connect with other undamaged nerve cells, forming new neural pathways to accomplish a needed function.

For example, if one hemisphere of the brain is damaged, the intact hemisphere may take over some of its functions. The brain compensates for damage in effect by reorganizing and forming new connections between intact neurons. In order to reconnect, the neurons need to be stimulated through activity.

Neuroplasticity sometimes may also contribute to impairment. For example, people who are deaf may suffer from a continual ringing in their ears (tinnitus), the result of the rewiring of brain cells starved for sound. For neurons to form beneficial connections, they must be correctly stimulated.

via Neuroplasticity In The Brain – Dr. Norman Doidge.

Adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD) don’t dwell on why things go wrong in our lives. We are too busy moving on to the next shiny thing. ADD/ADHD medication helps us slow down our racing thoughts, so we can ask, “Is this the best thing for me to be doing?” or “Is this the right thing to say?” Writing about our ADD/ADHD lets us take things to a higher level. We can analyze our behaviors -- and misbehaviors -- and pinpoint how ADD/ADHD symptoms contribute to the problems in our lives.

I used to come home from work, in my dress clothes and high heels, and head straight to my rock garden to weed. After an hour, my dress was soiled, my stockings ripped, and my shoes trashed. Writing about this impulsive habit allowed me to see my behavior objectively. It made me realize I should change my clothes before working in the yard. Of course, making that discovery didn’t make clothes-changing a habit. I had to train my brain to get into my gardening garb.

The more I write about my ADD/ADHD challenges, the more I learn about why things -- at work, in relationships -- don’t go well. Writing makes me examine something I used to accept as another bad day, instead of just replaying the day in my mind and chastising myself for poor performance. Over time, writing has reduced the burdens of falling short of my own, or other people’s, expectations by giving me the perspective to make changes.

via Treat Attention Deficit Disorder Symptoms Through Writing | Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Help and Info -- ADDitude.

It's always good to see celebrities using their fame to help people. Learning Breakthrough salutes British star Kara Tointon for going public about her Dyslexia. Kara Tointon's BBC Documentary, "Kara Tointon: Don't Call Me Stupid" will help people overcome the stigmatization and seek treatments that can and do help adults with dyslexia.

Dyslexia symptoms and biological dysfunction According to some internationally recognized diagnostic manuals, dyslexia is a condition in which the normal ways of skills’ acquisition are blocked in the early stages of development. This is not a consequence of absent opportunities for learning or some form of brain injury or disease. It is considered that the causes of dyslexia are rooted in cognitive functioning abnormalities resulting from some type of biological dysfunction. That is why, dyslexia is defined as problematic learning which limits the ability of students to have a full command over information processing, motor skills, and the working memory. In individuals with the disorder, difficulties in recognizing, identifying, and discovering stimuli have been reported. In turn, these lead to difficulties in mastering some or all skills associated with speech, reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic.

via Dyslexia Symptoms and Emotional Problems | Center Harmony.

Train The Brain: Using Neurofeedback To Treat ADHD : NPR.

The link above references an interesting piece on NPR about how neurofeedback can be used to treat ADD/ADHD:

Even though there are studies now showing that neurofeedback works for ADHD, all of these studies have serious limitations, researchers say. So the approach remains promising but unproved, says David Rabiner, a researcher at Duke University who writes a newsletter about treatments for ADHD...

A team at The Ohio State University has nearly completed a pilot study of neurofeedback for ADHD that was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

The team had hoped to announce results last week at a scientific meeting in New York, but Gene Arnold, one of the scientists in charge of the study, says they had to delay that announcement because "we weren't able to get the results analyzed in time," he says.

Learning Breakthrough and the vestibular-cerebellar training approach to ADHD remediation more generally have been considered by the research team at Ohio State University as well. Our interest in the topic stems from the substantial neurofeedback aspect to the Learning Breakthrough Program...as the repetitive nature of LBP's balance exercises themselves generate what the user in this article calls "constant feedback during a session" through constant motor control monitoring, planning, executive function modulation, and hemispheric integration all in one system. There is much hope that as this research progresses and the pilot study information is collated that LBP will be tested along side on neurofeedback techniques and a control group.

When the cognitive paradigm became dominant, inattention became the focus of ADHD, and disorder was renamed attention deficit disorder (ADD). Two subtypes would later appear in the literature, which correspond to ADD with or without hyperactivity. The diagnostic nomenclature reflects the notion that the primary problem was an attentional (and thus, cognitive) one and not primarily behavioral. The attentional problems had to do with the ability to shift attention from one stimulus to another (something that Jonah Lehrer has called an attention-allocation disorder, since it isn’t really a deficit of attention). The hyperactivity symptoms were also reformulated as cognitive: connected with an executive processing deficit termed “freedom from distractibility.”

Preliminary findings from a study of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show that sensory intervention -- for example, deep pressure and strenuous exercise -- can significantly improve problem behaviors such as restlessness, impulsivity and hyperactivity. Of the children receiving occupational therapy, 95 percent improved. This is the first study of this size on sensory intervention for ADHD.

The Temple University researchers, Kristie Koenig, PhD, OTR/L, and Moya Kinnealey, PhD, OTR/L, wanted to determine whether ADHD problem behaviors would decrease if underlying sensory and neurological issues were addressed with occupational therapy. Their study, "Comparative Outcomes of Children with ADHD: Treatment Versus Delayed Treatment Control Condition," was presented Friday, May 13, at the American Occupational Therapy Association meeting in Long Beach, Calif.

Children with ADHD have difficulty paying attention and controlling their behavior. Experts are uncertain about the exact cause of ADHD, but believe there are both genetic and biological components. Treatment typically consists of medication, behavior therapy or a combination of the two.

via TherapyTimes.com: Occupational therapy improves ADHD.

LBP's focused sensory processing program for ADHD is a perfect fit for those looking to introduce a complete and complementary set of sensory exercises to their daily routine.

Auditory processing disorder in relation to developmental disorders of language, communication and attention: a review and critique - International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders.

This article describes the vagaries of diagnosis of auditory processing issues and shows how important work is being done to help make proper evaluations and treatment research widely available. It is not definitive but is a useful article for those orienting themselves to CAPD issues.

Background: Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) does not feature in mainstream diagnostic classifications such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition (DSM-IV), but is frequently diagnosed in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and is becoming more frequently diagnosed in the United Kingdom.

Aims: To familiarize readers with current controversies surrounding APD, with an emphasis on how APD might be conceptualized in relation to language and reading problems, attentional problems and autistic spectrum disorders.
Methods & Procedures: Different conceptual and diagnostic approaches adopted by audiologists and psychologists can lead to a confusing picture whereby the child who is regarded as having a specific learning disability by one group of experts may be given an APD diagnosis by another. While this could be indicative of co-morbidity, there are concerns that different professional groups are using different labels for the same symptoms.
Conclusions & Implications: APD, as currently diagnosed, is not a coherent category, but that rather than abandoning the construct, we need to develop improved methods for assessment and diagnosis, with a focus on interdisciplinary evaluation.

So much of my reading lately and connections to new users have to do with the misdiagnosis of ADHD. There seems to be no other "disability" that generates more difficulty in accurate diagnosis and more ways to address the symptoms than ADHD. For a rather good look at the topic, a doctor friend sent me the link attached here. The language may be a little loose but the point is that there are many paths to a misdiagnosis and it is something for all of us, therapists, teachers and parents to be aware of that I thought it would be a good share.

via The Role of Brain Fitness in Self Help Programs:

All of those programs involve regular practice of certain behaviors, and there are three behaviors we humans can hope to manage or control, our thinking, our feelings, and our behaviors, or how our body moves.

If you have read Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s book FLOW, which is treatise on the psychology of optimal performance, then you know that we process sound, visual, touch, smell, and taste information at the rate of seven bits of data every 1/18th second, so self help programs need to be learned and implemented in a very short period of time. (1/18th second is twice as fast as I can blink my eyes).

Self help then must be a process of awareness and management of sensory processing done very quickly and very frequently.

I liken the process for my anger management clients to steering a car, you make thousands of small adjustments to the position of the vehicle on the road, and are paying attention to hundreds of variables at a given moment, traffic in front, behind, traffic lights, children, the policeman six blocks ahead, ect. As you do this, you keep the vehicle going in the direction you want, at the speed you want, in a safe way for yourself and other drivers. You avoid potholes.

Page 74-75 The Still-Missing Core

"One of the basic principles of a two-engine airplane is the synchronicity between the two engine systems that are fixed on either side of the plane. If one engine puts out more thrust than the other, it causes problems in flight. If the disparity is sufficiently severe, it can cause the plane to go out of control and crash. Remembering this principle caused an idea to begin to percolate: was the issue these children were experiencing related to the balance between the two sides of their bodies?

In the mid-1960s, It was not a popular idea to look for learning ability in the body, but the more I observed the children in my classroom, the more the two problems seemed corollary. And why shouldn’t they be? The movement of the body through space is defined by brain functions, just as the ability to read and do arithmetic are defined by brain functions. If the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone, wouldn’t it make sense that the various departments in the brain are connected, too? I began to wonder: what if an individual’s body provides a graphic representation of the inner workings of the brain?"

Dr. Frank Belgau-author of A Life in Balance, Discovery of a Learning Breakthrough

via Facebook 2 | Excerpt from Life in Balance, Discovery of a Learning Breakthrough

Here's another great example of neuroplasticity impacts derived from motor skills training. Cortical expressions of proprioceptive responses over time are around us every day and form the basis of the EXPERIENTIAL part of neuroplastic changes. The implications for athletic performance and rehab are tremendous and the article below gives some good insight.

Motor Learning and Neuroplasticity in Rehabiliation.

Here’s a brief summary of an excellent paper by Boudreau et al from Manual Therapy. Patrick Ward and I had a brief discussion about this paper and since we found great benefit in its contents, I thought I would share some of it with you.

The purpose of this paper was to summarize several important aspects of motor-skill training for enhancing musculoskeletal rehabilitation.

Cortical Neuroplasticity: a dynamic feature of life that encompasses functional or morphological change in properties of neurons (connection strength, represenational patterns, neuron reorganization.

• Positive changes: improvements in motor performance


• Negative changes: decreases in performance, such as in the presence of chronic pain (low back pain resulting in decreased cortical spinal drive in lumbar musculature and subsequent shift in somatosensory representation)

A good piece on iPad Apps for Autistic Children. The benefits that technology is bringing and will bring to children with disabilities is truly a miracle!

The blog post linked to below talks about Dr. Charles Parker, psychiatrist and ADHD expert. I have spoken with Dr. Parker on a couple of occasions and he was quite gracious in looking at our program. He was helpful, open minded and great to listen to as I was getting more involved in the science behind brain fitness topics. As will many psychiatrists with expansive minds and reading lists, he was never closed minded in his approach to LBP even though he never decided "take it on" or make it more central to his studies. I recall spending a great deal of time learning about SPEC imaging and other empirical methods based on reading from his blog and last year got to enjoy his presentation to the Virtual ADHD conference. Nice article and best wishes to Dr. Parker. Thanks to Moms With ADD/ADHD site for the posting.

ADHD Medication Rules: Paying Attention To The Meds For Paying Attention - Moms With ADD/ADHD.

Dr. Edward (Ned) Hallowell, ADHD expert and best-selling author, announces making the Learning Breakthrough Program available at the prestigious Hallowell Centers in both Massachusetts and New York.

Dr. Hallowell's inclusion of Learning Breakthrough's proven balance and sensory remediation program is a welcome addition to the therapy options offered at his US centers. Learning Breakthrough will be critical to his positive, multidisciplinary, "strength-based" treatment aproach and is being used to help solve the challenges of ADHD, Dyslexia, CAPD as well as other cognitive needs. The program's value lies in enabling clients to further their developmental and academic objectives as well as social, behavioral and self-esteem ones, which is exactly why it has been so valuable as a complementary treatment in similar clinics for decades.

School mornings are hard on every family, especially those with a child with ADHD. To make mornings easier, as parents we need to organize ourselves before we organize our children.

via Book Review - A Life in Balance

by Frank Belgau as told to Eric Belgau; 200 pages. Subtitle: Discovery of a Learning Breakthrough.

"Learning Breakthrough" is a program that uses a balance board, pendulum, bean bags, and other therapy items to train kids' brains and make learning easier. Frank Belgau, who developed the program, tells of his experiences in the classroom and in academia as he worked with children to find the techniques that would turn the lights on for them. It's an engaging tale, maybe even enough to make you want to seek the program out and buy a kit at the end.

Use It or Lose It: The Theory and Practice of Brain Exercise and Fitness for Cognitive Health - 1252th Edition | Health Blog.

When we exercise our brains, we put our Neurons and connections between neurons in action.

Given the diversity of functions outlined above, it is clear that different activities are going to activate different brain areas, which scientists now know thanks to neuroimaging techniques. There is no one magic bullet that is best (either crosswords puzzles, or computer-based programs, or physical exercise): we do need a variety of mental stimulation or “brain exercises”.