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Hacking My Kid's Brain: How a Child's Neurons Were Rewired

Mark Woodman Email <http://www.wired.com/services/feedback/letterstoeditor>
05.29.07 | 2:00 AM 
 <http://www.wired.com/print/medtech/health/news/2007/05/brain_hack#>  
 <http://www.wired.com/print/medtech/health/news/2007/05/brain_hack#>  

Photo: Mark Woodman 

Three months ago I took my 7-year-old son through a neurological treatment
designed to hack his brain. It's been 90 days since his treatment ended, and I
am happy to report the hack has made a huge difference. 

Friends and family inevitably ask, "Dd it work?" While a simple "yes" might
suffice, the specifics of Caleb's results show just how effectively a brain can
recalibrate itself. Caleb is experiencing the world in a whole new way.

As a child diagnosed with sensory processing disorder, or SPD, Caleb doesn't
experience senses the way other people do. Stimuli from his environment and body
are sometimes misinterpreted or ignored altogether. In addition to the obvious
physical difficulties manifested with this neurological disorder, it also
diminishes the ability to learn, think and even socialize. Behaviors we take for
granted, like eye contact and maintaining a polite distance, are often huge
challenges for people with SPD. 

The month-long Sensory Learning Program <http://sensorylearning.com/>  in
Boulder, Colorado, was designed to recalibrate Caleb's reception of sensory
input, reorganizing the neural pathways that process information. Read my
mid-treatment report here
<http://blog.wired.com/biotech/2007/02/hacking_my_chil.html> . Caleb's visual
and auditory perception is now within normal ranges and his visual-motor skills
have significantly improved. The only area where Caleb still shows appreciable
deficits is in proprioceptive <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception>
awareness -- the sense of one's own body -- so we have turned to occupational
therapy to help in this regard.

The Sensory Learning Program focuses on three modalities: vision, hearing and
balance. The effectiveness of this "sensory intervention" is measured by a
series of tests administered before the treatment, directly after the treatment,
and once more at the end of three months. 

The Auditory

Prior to the treatment, the program's creator, Mary Bolles
<http://www.sensorylearning.com/founder.php> , tested Caleb's hearing acuity. We
discovered he was particularly sensitive to certain frequencies, making it
difficult or even painful to hear certain sounds or voices. In addition, his
hearing was not balanced; one ear was more sensitive than the other in some
ranges. We were advised that due to his struggle with SPD, Caleb's hearing
irregularities were probably neurological in origin. 

One of the remarkable aspects of the program is that a patient's brain will
continue to rewire itself even after the treatment has stopped. One month after
the treatment, tests showed that some of Caleb's hearing irregularities had
balanced out. The improvements were subtle, but encouraging. Three months after
the treatment, his hearing test showed a nearly ideal profile of balance and
sensitivity. His hearing is now quite normal.

Now that he can perceive sound correctly, Caleb is learning to listen in a whole
new way. He is learning how to cope with noisy environments like his classroom,
and his own speech has become more nuanced. He's even trying new phrases and
turns of speech, much to our amusement. At dinner he recently remarked, "I'm
tired of that. I hope it goes out of fashion soon." 

The Visual

The next part of the testing involved measuring Caleb's field of vision.
Although his eyes are physically healthy, his brain has been effectively
ignoring his peripheral vision. This virtual tunnel vision has caused problems
with everything from detecting social cues to navigating the aisle of a grocery
store.

His vision has also shown steady improvement since the program ended. After one
month, Caleb's perception range was nearly normal in both eyes. At three months,
his visual field has expanded outward even more, and he now has usable
peripheral vision. Already, I have seen signs of better situational awareness. I
used to constantly pull him out of harm's way on sidewalks and in store aisles.
Now he can walk with me with barely any guidance or redirection needed. 

Our society is filled with visual social cues, and Caleb can now see some of
them for the first time. He has started to read people's expressions to
understand their emotions, and has also become much more aware of his own
emotions. As a kid who also has Aspeger's Syndrome
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome> , this is still a tough area
for him; we have to coach him in picking up on cues that most kids learned by
instinct years ago.

Another interesting "side-effect" is that Caleb has begun to guess peoples'
motives by observing their behavior. For example, he and I like to play a
computer game where the setup involves naming several robots. One night I picked
names like "Chocolate Chip Cookie" and "Ice Cream." He chuckled at me and said,
"You're just naming desserts because you're on a diet and can't eat any of that
stuff." A few months earlier he would have never made such a connection.

The Visual-Motor 

Visual-motor skills help us translate what we see into appropriate motor
responses. This covers everything from copying a sentence out of a book to
kicking a soccer ball. Because sensory integration is the key problem for those
with SPD, a visual-motor test can provide tremendous insight into the severity
of the disorder. 

Before the treatment began, we tested Caleb's visual-motor skills using the
Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration
<http://www.pearsonassessments.com/tests/vmi.htm> . This well-regarded test
comes up with a score by comparing the performance of thousands of people in the
same age range. It's fairly straightforward: You copy various shapes drawn for
you in a booklet, and your score depends on how accurate you are. Your score
depends on the shape to be copied, your ability to reproduce shape
intersections, angles and symmetry. 

Although Caleb is very bright, his pre-treatment Beery VMI score put him in the
32nd percentile in visual-motor skills. The interesting thing about the test is
that it provides a very tangible, practical metric to see how well the Sensory
Learning Program is working for an individual. Seeing more is good, better
hearing is good. But a measurable improvement in visual-motor acuity means the
brain is really rewiring itself to integrate the senses more efficiently. 

Three months after the treatment, the Beery VMI tests have revealed dramatic
changes in Caleb. His VMI score increased from the 32nd to the 47th percentile,
his is visual perception climbed from the 58th to the 82nd percentile and his
motor coordination started in the 70th and is now in the 94th percentile. In
all, his "functional age" has gone from six months behind his chronological age
to several years ahead of it.

One notable effect has been on Caleb's penmanship and writing abilities. A month
ago it took him 45 minutes to write four sentences on lined paper in his best
penmanship. Recently he wrote a thank-you card to his teacher in less than five
minutes. The card had no lines on it, and he wrote more neatly than he did on
those sentences last month. His progress in this area has been astonishing.

The Unknown

Despite the encouraging results, the program isn't a quick fix for sensory
processing disorder. Proprioceptive awareness is still pretty tough for Caleb.
His brain may be getting the right information now, but he still has to learn
how to use it for the first time. We hope that he now has the neurological
wiring needed to eventually catch up with his peers in social areas. The
intriguing aspect of this whole experiment is to see evidence that my son's
brain continues to reorganize itself around the sensory information. Caleb is
experiencing the world in new ways, and only time will tell what comes of it. 

Several clinics across the United States administer the Sensory Learning
Program, and thousands of people have had similarly dramatic results. Many of
the people who go through the program are in the autistic spectrum, since SPD is
a common issue for autistic people. A study
<http://www.autismspeaks.org/press/cdc_autism_prevalence.php>  published in
February by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that the
prevalence of autism has increased to one in 150 people. Because of this trend,
sensory interventions like this program may become mainstream through sheer
necessity. 

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See Also: 

Hacking My Child's Brain <http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mods/news/2007/02/72810>


Bodyhack Blog: Part 1, Considering The Hack
<http://blog.wired.com/biotech/2007/02/hacking_my_chil.html>  

Bodyhack Blog: Part 5, The First Breakthrough
<http://blog.wired.com/biotech/2007/02/hacking_my_chil_4.html>  

Bodyhack Blog: Part 6, Caleb Speaks
<http://blog.wired.com/biotech/2007/03/hacking_my_chil.html>  

Bodyhack Blog: Part 7, Ethics Considered
<http://blog.wired.com/biotech/2007/03/hacking_my_chil_1.html>  

Wired Magazine: The Key to Genius
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/genius.html>  

Buddha on the Brain <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.02/dalai.html>  

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