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Spatial Awareness

Jul 29
0

Sensory Processing and Perception

By | Blog, Enrichment, Enrichment for Adults, Games, Ignite! At Home, Ignite! At School, Ignite! In The Workplace, Interventions, Spatial Awareness | No Comments

The five senses – vision, smell, hearing, touch and taste – are the messengers for everything that happens around us. Out of the five, the most valuable to the brain is the visual system.  The visual system occupies over 30% of the brains mass and is the only sense that has an entire lobe dedicated to its functional processing called the occipital lobe.

Enhancing Sensory Processing and Perception

The brain is an amazing machine, capable of overcoming sensory deficiencies like hearing and sight. To enhance each sense, the brain needs to experience new tastes, smells, textures, sights and sounds in a variety of environments.  One can improve sensory memory by purposely limiting one sense (ie limiting sight with a blindfold) and guessing what is making a certain sound, or what object might have that texture.

Sounds

Try this puzzle from The Playful Brain by Richard Restak and Scott Kim to challenge your ability to imagine sounds created by everyday objects.

SOUND EFFECT                                                                                              SOUND SOURCE

___1. Block of ice sliding on the floor                                                                  a. Balloon

___2. Bone Crushing                                                                                           b. Pen caps floating in glass

___3. Body stabbing                                                                                            c. Luggage cart

___4. Horse’s hooves                                                                                          d. Creaky floor

___5. Brain surgery                                                                                             e. Knife in a watermelon

___6. Dog collar                                                                                                  f. Bowling ball on floor

___7. Clothes rubbing against oneself                                                                g. Newspaper being crunched up

___8. Bicycle                                                                                                       h. Squeaky chair

___9. Rubber gloves                                                                                           i. Wet chamois cloth

___10. Car suspension                                                                                        j. Celery

___11. Boat                                                                                                         k. Set of keys

___12. Fire                                                                                                          l. Leather purse

___13. Ice cubes                                                                                                m. Pillowcase

___14. Car seat                                                                                                   n. Coconut shells

___15. Walking on leaves                                                                                    o. Walking on grass mat

___16. Walking on snow                                                                                      p. Walking on cornstarch

___17. Walking on grass                                                                                     q. Walking on quarter-inch recording tape

 

Answers to be posted in Sensory Processing and Perception: Part 2

 

 

Jul 23
0

How Adult Coloring Books Improve Cognition

By | Blog, Enrichment, Enrichment for Adults, Ignite! At Home, Ignite! At School, Ignite! In The Workplace, Interventions, Memory, Spatial Awareness | No Comments

While in a case conference with a team of experts discussing future therapy goals for a TBI (traumatic brain injury) client, coloring books for adults made its way onto the list. The conversation sparked excitement in the team as we recognized this activity could solve a number of problems we were facing at this stage of therapy.

1.  How can we minimize the amount of hours the client spends out of the home attending different therapies? With 2 small children at home during the summer, this was important for the family.

2.  What activities can the whole family do together that still count as therapy homework?

3. How do we teach this client to relax when the client perceives yoga, meditation and even sleep to be activities that get in the way of their to-do list.

In addition to these goals, we’re always on the look out for fresh, cognitively stimulating activities and research is demonstrating adult coloring books can provide just that.

“The practice generates wellness, quietness and also stimulates brain areas related to motor skills, the senses and creativity”, sites an article published in the Huffington Post.

Beyond Motor Skills, Sensory Processing and Perception and Creativity and Imagination, which are 3 out of 10 Cognitive Domains, other cognitive benefits can include Attention, Logic, Organization and Planning, Motivation, and Social and Emotional Functioning.

A recent article published in the New Yorker, outlines some other interesting applications for adult coloring books, from enrichment to “preventing murders”.

Go here to print off some very cool coloring sheets

 

 

 

Apr 02
0

Today’s BrainWOD: “Mile In Their Shoes”

By | Enrichment, Ignite! At Home, Ignite! At School, Ignite! In The Workplace, Spatial Awareness, wod | No Comments

memorychamps

Part of the mysterious autistic brain might be interhemispheric coordination: one side is underconnected or overconnected, or one area (like the amygdala) might be wired to the wrong spots.

We can’t simulate how that feels. But we can get a tiny taste.

Since the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body, and the left controls the right side, we can test our interhemispheric coordination by performing a similar mental task unilaterally. Covering our nondominant eye while doing a word search shouldn’t affect our speed, but covering the DOMINANT eye will usually dramatically affect our speed.

Try this today:

Find your dominant eye.

Make two word searches using the same words in different combinations.

Time yourself with your nondominant eye covered.

Wait five minutes

Time yourself with your dominant eye covered.

What’s the difference in your time?

Two sample word searches are attached!

nondominanteye

DOMINANTEYE