The therapeutic components of retraining the brain aim at eliminating or reducing a child’s need for medication by normalizing brain function within a drug-free and non-invasive protocol. It’s a protocol available and effective, especially for parents and caregivers caring for children (and grown-ups) who appear unmanageable or unresponsive, fail in school, won’t listen, and can’t sit still and spell.
Retraining the Brain: The Four Therapeutic Components
Some individuals who’ve heard the phrase “retraining your brain or retraining your child’s brain” have raised their eyebrows as it sounds impossible. Looking at the following components of the program says otherwise:
1. Physical Movement or Motor Activity
Motor control is the brain system responsible for human movement, whether intentional, done subconsciously, or due to reflex. Successful motor control is crucial to interacting with the physical world, moving how we desire, and for posture, balance, and stability.
Modern brain scientists insist that motor control is the reason brains exist at all. That is mainly because motor activity, understanding, and learning or general cognition are so interdependent that they could basically be regarded as one and the same.
Of course, that is if one were to consider primitive reflexes. These are particular movements, such as the startle reflex, made by newborn children.
The startle reflex usually occurs when a baby is startled by a loud sound or movement. In response, the baby throws back his or her head, extends the arms and legs, cries, then pulls the arms and legs back in.
The meaning here is that these are actions built-in at conception and recognizable at birth. They cause non-deliberate motor activity that helps and directs the brain to gradually develop sensory skills and other skills like reading, comprehension, mathematical calculation, reasoning, information processing and retention, and social and emotional understanding.
Most parents and caregivers are not sufficiently informed or educated about the disturbing fact that in the newborn, these reflexes are easily and very frequently disturbed or altered from birthing, the handling of the head and neck, to seemingly simple accidents involving the head. Such disturbances can become life-altering.
When these reflexes do not sufficiently emerge during early development and do not get naturally suppressed as they should do automatically during later stages of development, voluntary motor development would not naturally emerge. The consequences can range from clumsiness and physical discoordination, reading and learning difficulties to symptoms of a range of spectrum disorders, like an elevated startle reflex in children and adolescents, which predicts anxiety disorder development.
Modern brain research now directs routine testing of primitive reflexes in children up to late teens, considering any perceived learning or behavioral challenges. Patients should also access programs to facilitate normal integration of reflexes. These programs could include auditory perceptual stimulation, vestibular stimulation (gaze and gait), and gross motor movement (walking, running, jumping).
If there is one activity that seems to be the “magic bullet” against every disease or disorder, it is exercise, especially aerobic exercise. It affects all systems, but aerobic exercises mostly impact the efficient functioning of the central nervous system because of a primary effect on the brain.
The autonomic, immune, endocrine, cognitive, emotional, and sensory systems are all distributed in the brain. Therefore, exercise has a generalized effect on all brain functions.
As pointed out earlier, the primary source of activation of the brain is through the motor system (movement), so the high-frequency, low-intensity activity of the motor system will have powerful effects on the entire brain. We would expect that exercise would help improve a child’s ability to learn and control behavior and focus attention. On the other hand, the lack of physical activity would be expected to cause the opposite effect.
2. Visual Stimulus
Various forms of visual imagery have been found to help improve intelligence, motor performance, and behavior. Guided imagery is one form of visualization, where the subject is asked to create internal scenarios and mental pictures that evoke positive physical responses.
Ideation or mental imaging is reported to help improve the immune system, reduce stress, and cause significant blood flow changes to the cerebellum and frontal lobe. If individuals imagine a motor activity like playing tennis or a cognitive act like mental calculation, both show significant increases in different brain areas.
It has been shown that those who imagine shooting a basketball display as much improvement in that skill after a week as those who actually physically practice shooting a basketball. Thus, whether imagined or done, motor acts must activate similar areas of the brain that create functional improvement in motor control.
It has also been shown that visually, light, color, action, and the appeal to the imagination, such as what is experienced by viewing a movie, naturally engages several therapeutic strategies for retraining your brain.
3. Eye Movements
Our eyes usually move in brief motions called saccades. Between the saccades, they focus on objects that we see.
Although our eyes move several more times per second, we perceive the world only during the brief moments of fixation. In essence, we can think of our visual experience as a rapid sequence of still photographs. However, the fixations occur too rapidly for us to notice the interval between the snapshots.
Many are familiar that children with autism have abnormal gaze as observed in daily-life situations, where the fixations are less rapid. Therefore, intervention strategies employing eye movements as a therapeutic vehicle are useful for gaze correction.
Additionally, people with autism and other neurobehavioral disorders have an issue with following another person’s gaze direction. Research suggests that gaze following is “hard-wired” in the brain, so professionals should include intervention strategies using eye gaze as a vehicle in children with neurobehavioral disorders.
Research speculates that the hippocampus and amygdala are involved in using eye movements as a rehabilitation tool. It is thought that these two structures are involved in much of the brain’s learning and remembering. Therefore, where the amygdala retains the emotional flavor of memory, the hippocampus retains the dry facts.
It has been suggested that eye gaze interventions resynchronize the activity of the two hemispheres by alternating stimuli, which may mimic the activity of the heart pacemaker function within the brain hemisphere that may be suppressed.
Eye movement training can be powerful but difficult to perform for many children with learning or behavioral problems. Training that is more specific to resembling rapid visual graphics on a screen, such as captions, is easiest and has been clinically found to be most effective. As children become more coordinated with their eye movements, there usually is improvement in learning and behavior.
4. Sound
Normally, hearing involves sound waves pushing air pulses against the eardrum, moving the mechanical joints of the middle ear bones. The air bones amplify these vibrations to the inner ear, pushing the fluid into wave pulses that will move tiny nerve endings. They will fire signals through the eighth cranial nerve directly into the brain’s temporal lobe to interpret these impulses as sound.
There is obvious interconnectivity between the brain’s visual and hearing pathways and those of the other senses. Sound and music, especially when integrated neuro-scientifically within child-appropriate entertaining content, will increase brain arousal through primary hearing pathways. It then helps improve intelligence and frontal lobe function in neurobehavioral disorders of childhood.
Many treatment disciplines use sound and music as their primary mode of therapy. These techniques have been effective for children with learning disabilities and behavioral problems. Modern brain scientists agree that sound and music can affect dysfunction in the nervous system through calming and energizing effects on the brain and central nervous system.
As a clinical therapy, sound as music with dance movements is used in hospitals, schools, and psychological treatment programs, to reduce stress, lower blood pressure, alleviate pain, overcome various learning disabilities, improve movement and balance, and even promote endurance and strength.
A Better Understanding of Brain Retraining Through Its Components
The therapeutic components of the brain retraining program prove its long-term effects on individuals with autism and other neurobehavioral disorders. After all, they’re part of our growth and everyday lives, whether or not we have such conditions. Successfully retraining the brain of your loved one with autism and the likes will help them physically, socially, emotionally, and mentally.