The Breakthrough Blog

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

A newly published article by the Department of Neurology, Division of Cognitive Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine outlines another look into the role the cerebellum plays in language development and cognition. There are many researchers investigating this part of the brain that is so deeply involved in movement and a huge variety [...]

If you’re the parent of a child who’s having trouble learning or behaving in school, you quickly find yourself confronted with a series of difficult choices. You can do nothing — and watch your child flounder while teachers register their disapproval. Or you can get help, which generally means, first, an expensive and time-consuming evaluation, [...]

Sensory Integration is a term that describes how we organize and fully process the information gathered from our senses. The study of sensory integration describes how the brain functions to instantly and automatically interpret where we are, what we see, what we feel, and what we hear in a meaningful framework. Efficient and accurate processing [...]

Balance is a multi-sensory activity. Our “sense” of balance, from the time of our embryonic development through full-fledged adulthood, is based on the proper functioning of the vestibular system in close conjunction with our visual, motor skills and positioning (proprioceptive) systems. Body position, muscular-skeletal control, tactile feedback, motor coordination and visual processing inputs all combine [...]