Learn how IM helped improve Michael’s communication.

Michael is following 1-step commands that are given to him. He is pointing at and identifying simple shapes. He is focusing on a fine motor activity for up to 15 minutes in duration without exiting the activity.Michael’s family is thrilled with the progress he has made with IM. He loves to go to music class and has started singing Baa Baa Black Sheep, Row, Row Your Boat and Itsy Bitsy Spider. When they go to lunch, he grabs his tray and moves it along the lunch line. He’s also opened up to his classmates, and is thoroughly enjoying their company!

Preventing falls among patients in healthcare settings requires a comprehensive approach. As therapists we find that falls can result in hip fractures, head injuries or even death. In many cases, adults aged 65 years or older,who have experienced a fall, have a hard time recovering and their overall health deteriorates. One half of all older adults hospitalized for hip fracture never regain their former level of function. For our patients, the fear of falling results in self-limiting activities. It causes reduced mobility and fitness and ultimately predisposes them to falls.

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...

Andrew was adopted in 2000 from Russia...he was 4 years old. (He is now 15 years old.) He had an un-repaired cleft palate, profound hearing impairment, severe malnutrition, profound insomnia of unknown origin, severe sensory dysfunction at time of adoption, along with intestinal infections (parasites and h. pylori). Andrew's had triennial neuropsychological testing, both privately and through the school district routinely since he joined our family in 2000. Through these evaluations, he's been diagnosed with PDD/NOS (pervasive developmental disorder/not otherwise specified), dysgraphia, attachment disorder, institutional autism, gross motor planning impairment, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), severe visual motor deficits, and RAD (reactive attachment disorder), emotional disorder among other things...
 

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 at infancy. Determined, we made a commitment, as long as she's progressing, regardless how slow, we'd keep pushing her forward. Thus, as parents we developed new hopes and dreams for our daughter - that eventually lead her to independency.

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...

Adult ADD / ADHD self-help myths

You may be holding onto misconceptions about how much you can help yourself. Take a look at this tips...Curtesy of Helpguide.org

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 a difference."

IM Helps Family with ADHD Therapy

Renee Williams and her 5-year-old son Cameron submitted the winning name for our mascot: IM Buddy!
Cameron and his mother Renee have never gone through the Interactive Metronome program and they are really exited to start their IM-Home sessions with one of our IM-Home providers. Renee, stumbled upon our IM-Home website and after reading and seeing that IM-Home would be very beneficial to her son, she took a chance to register for our contest at our Facebook page “Hope for ADHD.”...

 

 

Principal Julie Sterner's injury impaired her ability to read and multitask after falling in a bounce house. She said therapy helped her become herself again.

York, PA - Last summer, Julie Sterner broke down in the ice-cream aisle at a grocery store. She couldn't remember what she wanted to buy. The bright lights, people and choices were too much for her mind to handle. She felt overwhelmed and panicked.

"I didn't know how to get out," Sterner said.

In April, the 33-year-old fell in an inflatable bounce house during a Dover Area Senior High School event.

Sterner -- principal at Dover Intermediate School -- hooked up to an elastic cord to race a student. She lay on the inflated floor after she slipped and the band snapped her body backward to the ground. She felt groggy as pain circled her head. She thought she was OK, so she went home and slept. She awoke the next day with a headache and felt fatigued.

IM Provider April Christopherson OTR/L guest stars in the “Focus Point” Voice America National Radio program.

She discuses “The Shandy Clinic” in Colorado Springs, CO, Interactive Metronome, other programs that she has worked with, and the use of modalities to treat pediatrics (SPD, ADHD, Autism), TBI, and Stroke Rehab. The show also discusses the importance of rhythm and timing in the brain, and how it affects our everyday lives. You can listen to the interview at this link: VoiceAmerica
 

And the Beat Goes On – How Timing Affects Learning
By Beth Ardell, MPT

The tick-tock of a metronome has long been used by pianists while practicing their craft. Research now suggests that students with learning differences who “stay on beat” can increase their focus, mental processing and cognitive abilities.
Rhythm and research
As infants, we very quickly develop a sense of rhythm. In the games we play and the songs we sing, rhythm is a way for children to learn about their bodies and their environment. For children with learning differences, activities using rhythm are increasingly being used as a tool to increase mental fluency, thereby improving the effectiveness of many brain and body functions. Growing evidence suggests a link between mental timekeeping and cognition and learning. Children diagnosed with dyslexia may have deficiencies in their timing and rhythm abilities, and some researchers believe the connection between time/rhythm and learning may be so significant that a student’s response time to a metronome beat may predict performance on standardized reading tests. Students have demonstrated significant improvements in broad reading and reading fluency, language processing, and even golf performance after participation in a program to improve timing. In addition, studies have indicated improvements in children with ADHD in the areas of attention, motor control, language processing, reading and ability to regulate aggression after intervention using a metronome. High school athletes, also after receiving metronome training, reported benefits such as, “I am in the right place at the right time,” and “I feel my body is more in sync with my mind.” The team participating in this training reported a significantly more successful year with improved team focus, synchronization and overall team execution. A child’s timing, the ability to feel and express steady beat, is fundamental to movement and music, and has been shown to positively correlate with an increase in mathematics and reading abilities, as well as overall school achievement.
 

TUSTIN CHRONIC CONDITION CENTER

The Tustin Chronic Condition Center has incorporated a new software program called the Interactive Metronome. The software helps children who have ADD or ADHD, autism, dyslexia and learning disabilities. The equipment helps children with working memory, attention, processing information, sequencing information in order and motor coordination.

“Our new Interactive Metronome® helps us work with and improve the function of the frontal cortex. The fontal cortex controls things like impulsiveness and attention span, and it’s where the personality “lives”. It’s also where things like depression and anxiety are created, and for these children it’s the region in the brain that’s not working as well as it could be.”

Visit The Tustin Chronic Condition Center for the full details.