The Feldenkrais Method is a type of exercise therapy devised by Israeli Moshé Feldenkrais (1904–1984) during the mid-20th century. The method is claimed to reorganize connections between the brain and body and so improve body movement and psychological state.
Facilitated communication (FC), or supported typing, is a scientifically discredited technique that claims to allow non-verbal people, such as those with autism, to communicate. The technique involves a facilitator guiding the disabled person's arm or hand in an attempt to help them type on a keyboard or other such device which they are unable to properly use if unfacilitated.
Developmental disorders comprise a group of psychiatric conditions originating in childhood that involve serious impairment in different areas. There are several ways of using this term. The most narrow concept is used in the category "Specific Disorders of Psychological Development" in the ICD-10. These disorders comprise developmental language disorder, learning disorders, motor disorders, and autism spectrum disorders. In broader definitions ADHD is included, and the term used is neurodevelopmental disorders. Yet others include antisocial behavior and schizophrenia that begins in childhood and continues through life. However, these two latter conditions are not as stable as the other developmental disorders, and there is not the same evidence of a shared genetic liability.
Vision therapy (VT), or behavioral optometry, is an umbrella term for alternative medicine treatments using eye exercises, based around the pseudoscientific claim that vision problems are the true underlying cause of learning difficulties, particularly in children. Vision therapy has not been shown to be effective using scientific studies, except for helping with convergence insufficiency. Most claims—for example that the therapy can address neurological, educational, and spatial difficulties—lack supporting evidence. Neither the American Academy of Pediatrics nor the American Academy of Ophthalmology support the use of vision therapy.
Developmental disability is a diverse group of chronic conditions, comprising mental or physical impairments that arise before adulthood. Developmental disabilities cause individuals living with them many difficulties in certain areas of life, especially in "language, mobility, learning, self-help, and independent living". Developmental disabilities can be detected early on and persist throughout an individual's lifespan. Developmental disability that affects all areas of a child's development is sometimes referred to as global developmental delay.
Brain Gym is a proprietary brain training and body movement programme. It is widely considered to be pseudoscience.
The Institutes for The Achievement of Human Potential (IAHP), founded in 1955 by Glenn Doman and Carl Delacato, provide literature on and teaches a controversial patterning therapy, known as motor learning, which the Institutes promote as improving the "neurologic organization" of "brain injured" and mentally impaired children through a variety of programs, including diet and exercise. The Institutes also provides extensive early-learning programs for "well" children, including programs focused on reading, mathematics, language, and physical fitness. It is headquartered in Philadelphia, with offices and programs offered in several other countries.
Autism therapies include a wide variety of therapies that help people with autism, or their families. Such methods of therapy seek to aid autistic people in dealing with difficulties and increase their functional independence.
Auditory integration training (AIT) is a procedure pioneered in France by Guy Bérard, who promoted it as a cure for clinical depression and suicidal tendencies, along with what he said were very positive results for dyslexia and autism, although there has been very little empirical evidence regarding this assertion. It typically involves 20 half-hour sessions over 10 days listening to specially filtered and modulated music. It was used in the early 1990s as a treatment for autism; it has been promoted as a treatment for ADHD, depression, and a wide variety of other disorders. AIT has not met scientific standards for efficacy that would justify its use as a treatment for any condition.
Alfred A. Tomatis was a French otolaryngologist and inventor. He received his Doctorate in Medicine from the Paris School of Medicine. His alternative medicine theories of hearing and listening are known as the Tomatis method or Audio-Psycho-Phonology (APP).
Brain training is a program of regular activities purported to maintain or improve one's cognitive abilities. The phrase “cognitive ability” usually refers to components of fluid intelligence such as executive function and working memory. Cognitive training reflects a hypothesis that cognitive abilities can be maintained or improved by exercising the brain, analogous to the way physical fitness is improved by exercising the body. Cognitive training activities can take place in numerous modalities such as cardiovascular fitness training, playing online games or completing cognitive tasks in alignment with a training regimen, playing video games that require visuospatial reasoning, and engaging in novel activities such as dance, art, and music.
Equine-assisted therapy (EAT) encompasses a range of treatments that involve activities with horses and other equines to promote human physical and mental health. The use of EAT has roots in antiquity, and EAT applies to physical health issues in modern form dates to the 1960s. Modern use of horses for mental health treatment dates to the 1990s. Systematic review of studies of EAT as applied to physical health date only to about 2007, and a lack of common terminology and standardization has caused problems with meta-analysis. Due to a lack of high-quality studies assessing the efficacy of equine-assisted therapies for mental health treatment, concerns have been raised that these therapies should not replace or divert resources from other evidence-based mental health therapies.
The Arrowsmith School is a private school in Toronto, Ontario, for children in Grades 1 to 12 with learning disabilities. The original Arrowsmith School was founded in Toronto in 1980 by Barbara Arrowsmith Young. A second location was opened in May 2005 in Peterborough, Ontario. The Eaton Arrowsmith School, which is modelled on the Toronto school and founded by Howard Eaton, was opened in 2005 in Vancouver, British Columbia with two further branches established in Canada and one in the United States between 2009 and 2014.
The Kennedy Krieger Institute is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, Johns Hopkins affiliate located in Baltimore, Maryland, that provides in-patient and out-patient medical care, community services, and school-based programs for children and adolescents with learning disabilities, as well as disorders of the brain, spinal cord, and musculoskeletal system. The Institute provides services for children with developmental concerns mild to severe and is involved in research of various disorders, including new interventions and earlier diagnosis.
Cogmed is a cognitive training software program created in the lab of Torkel Klingberg, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute. Dr. Klingberg was using it to present working memory challenges to people while he studied their brains using fMRI, to try to learn about neuroplasticity. When the studies appeared to show that the challenges improved working memory, Klingberg founded Cogmed in 2001, with financial backing from the Karolinska Institute and venture capitalists.
Cognitive rehabilitation refers to a wide range of evidence-based interventions designed to improve cognitive functioning in brain-injured or otherwise cognitively impaired individuals to restore normal functioning, or to compensate for cognitive deficits. It entails an individualized program of specific skills training and practice plus metacognitive strategies. Metacognitive strategies include helping the patient increase self-awareness regarding problem-solving skills by learning how to monitor the effectiveness of these skills and self-correct when necessary.
Professor Minesh P. Mehta, MD, FASTRO, is an American radiation oncologist and physician-scientist of Indian origin, Ugandan birth, Zambian Schooling and American Training, who contributed to the field of oncology for more than two and half decades.
Barbara Arrowsmith Young is a Canadian author, entrepreneur and lecturer. She is the founder of the Arrowsmith School in Toronto and the controversial Arrowsmith Program which forms the basis of the school's teaching method. In 2012 she published The Woman Who Changed Her Brain which combines an autobiographical account of her own severe learning disabilities and the method she developed to overcome them with case studies of learning disabled children who she claims overcame similar problems by using her method.
LearningRx is a franchise based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The company claims to improve cognitive abilities.
