The Science Behind the
Brain Balance Program
Help your child improve focus, reduce anxiety, and build better behavior with the Brain Balance Program. We strengthen brain function to help kids thrive at school, at home, and in everyday life.
How Brain Balance Strengthens the Sensory Domain
The Brain Balance Program engages many sensory systems simultaneously through repetitive, layered stimulation that progressively intensifies over the course of the sessions. The layered sensory stimulation occurs while participants are engaged in additional specialized exercises to activate several brain systems simultaneously.
Sensory Domain Research
Environmental Enrichment as a Therapy for Autism: A Clinical Trial Replication and Extension
Behavioral Neuroscience, 2015
A randomized controlled trial explored sensory or sensory-motor enrichment as a therapy for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Children ages three to six with ASD were randomly assigned to groups that received
either daily sensory-motor enrichment along with their standard treatment or standard treatment alone. The children in the enrichment group participated
in exercises that activated different combinations of senses, including olfactory, tactile, thermal, auditory, visual, and motor systems. After six months, the enrichment group showed reduced sensory issues and autism severity and improved cognitive and receptive language skills compared to the control group. Children who engaged in only some of the sensory exercises experienced similar benefits to those who did all of them. This suggests that sensorimotor enrichment could be a beneficial treatment for various ASD symptoms.
Sensory-Motor Deficits in Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Autistic Disorder
Human Movement Science, 2004
This review article discusses research findings that implicate poor sensory- motor integration as a cause of motor problems in developmental disorders such as developmental coordination disorder (DCD), ADHD, and ASD. The researchers suggest that sensory and motor deficits in children with DCD and ASD may provide insight into some of the social difficulties found in these groups.
An Oscillatory Neural Network Model That Demonstrates the Benefits of Multisensory Learning
Cognitive Neurodynamics, 2018
This study uses a computational- modeling approach to investigate the mechanisms underlying multisensory processing. The results showed that the use of multisensory channels accelerates learning and recall by up to 80 percent. These findings are consistent with other recently published results in cognitive science showing that multisensory integration produces greater and more- efficient learning.
Sound Facilitates Visual Learning
Current Biology, 2006
Numerous studies have shown that practice can improve performance on low-level visual perceptual tasks. However, such learning is characteristically slow, requiring many days of training. This study shows that multisensory audiovisual training facilitates visual learning and results in significantly faster learning than single- sensory visual training. These results show that multisensory interactions can be exploited to yield more-efficient learning of sensory information and suggest that multisensory training programs would be the most effective for acquiring new skills.
How Brain Balance Strengthens the Motor Domain
Optimizing motor development is directly addressed throughout the Brain Balance Program, including exercises to enhance core postural muscles, gross-motor coordination, and fine-motor coordination in the hands and visual-motor system. These exercises are combined with multimodal activities to engage multiple brain systems simultaneously.
Motor Domain Research
Close Interrelation of Motor Development and Cognitive Development and of the Cerebellum and Prefrontal Cortex
Child Development, 2000
This article reviews research that explains on a neurobiological level why motor and cognitive development may be fundamentally interrelated. Evidence from neuroimaging, neuroanatomical, and behavioral studies shows this interrelationship is underpinned by a close interaction between the prefrontal cortex (a brain region that plays a critical role in cognitive functioning) and the cerebellum (a key brain region that regulates motor functioning including movement, balance, and coordination).
Dynamic Balance in Children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Its Relationship with Cognitive Functions and Cerebellum
Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 2017
Developing the ability to maintain balance under dynamic conditions is important in ordinary life because it enables people to perform activities while moving. The researchers found that seven- to 11-year-old children with ADHD and no other neurological conditions had poorer performance on dynamic balancing tasks compared to children
in typically developing control groups, and these deficits in dynamic balance were associated with inconsistencies in reaction times. The findings of this study show that poor dynamic balance control is associated with attentional deficits in school-age children.
Cognitive, Perceptual, and Motor Profiles of School-Aged Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
This study profiled the subtypes of DCD, which is a disorder characterized by below-age-appropriate gross- and/or fine-motor skills that interfere with daily life. This disorder includes additional impairments in visual perception, cognitive profiles, and executive functions but has been found to present in various combinations and severities. This study identified the groupings of challenges presenting with DCD. While children presented with five different combinations and severities of additional challenges including visual perception, cognitive profiles, and executive functions, deficits in executive functions were present in all five subtypes of DCD identified.
Relationships between Motor Proficiency and Academic Performance in Mathematics and Reading in School- Aged Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2018
This review article evaluated 55 published studies on the associations between motor proficiency and academic performance in math and reading in typically developing school-age children and adolescents. Significant positive associations were evident between academic performance and components of gross-motor proficiency, including coordination and agility. Studies also suggest that motor-skill interventions in primary-school settings may have a positive impact on academic performance in math, reading, or both.
Motor Coordination in Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Synthesis and Meta- Analysis
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2010
This review article analyzed the results
of 83 studies on motor coordination, gait, arm movements, or postural stability deficits in children with ASD. The results showed substantial motor- coordination deficits in the ASD groups across a wide range of behaviors. These studies suggest that impaired motor coordination is a cardinal feature of ASD and that interventions for this population should target motor coordination.
Sustained Visual Attention Is More Than Seeing
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2019
This study found that sustained visual attention is tied to sensory-motor coordination and is considered a top- down internal control mechanism. This is important, because many aspects of learning depend on the ability to select a target and sustain attention on it.
How Brain Balance Strengthens the Behavioral Domain
The Brain Balance Program supports improvements in the behavioral domain by strengthening the prefrontal cortex as well as maturing the foundational development that improves the accuracy, endurance, and control of actions and reactions to the environment. Progress requires the brain to accurately process information and relay it to the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls impulses, actions, emotional control, decision making, and reasoning. The necessary self-control and regulation that influence and control our behaviors are directly tied to the maturity of these domains and their connectivity to the prefrontal cortex.
Behavior Domain Research
Relations between Gross Motor Skills and Executive Functions, Controlling for the Role of Information Processing and Lapses of Attention in 8-10 Year Old Children
PLoS ONE, 2019
This study investigated the relationship between gross-motor skills and aspects of executive function in eight- to 10-year- old children, as well as how information processing and attention lapses relate
to gross-motor skills and executive function. Gross-motor skills were linked to working memory and response inhibition but not to interference control. Lapses
of attention predicted all executive functions. After accounting for attention and information processing, gross-motor skills were only related to visuospatial working memory and response inhibition. The results suggest a relationship between gross-motor skills and executive functions.
Assessment of Sensory Processing and Executive Functions at the School: Development, Reliability, and Validity of EPYFEI-Escolar”
Frontiers in Pediatrics, 2020
This study sought to determine the psychometric properties of the Assessment of Sensory Processing and Executive Functions at the School (EPYFEI- Escolar), a questionnaire meant to assess how sensory processing and executive functioning work in school participation. The results show high reliability of the questionnaire and the factors it comprised and support the potential value of the EPYFEI-Escolar to identify children’s academic requirements and challenges. Furthermore, this tool can aid in designing customized intervention programs based on individual student needs.
Relationship between Gross Motor Skills and Inhibitory Control in Preschool Children: A Pilot Study
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 16, 2022
This study examined the development of gross-motor skills and inhibitory control in preschool children. Inhibitory control comprises processes that affect an individual’s ability to plan, focus attention, remember, and juggle multiple tasks. Inhibitory control is key to executive functioning in young children because it works to suppress impulses and inappropriate behaviors and ignore distractions when working toward achieving a goal. For the purpose of this study, gross-motor skills were assessed by measuring locomotor and object control skills. Inhibitory control was measured using the Fish Flanker task for accuracy and reaction time. A significant negative correlation was found between motor skills and inhibitory control: a lower score on motor skills correlated with lower accuracy and reaction time on the inhibitory control task.
How Brain Balance Strengthens the Social-Emotional Domain
The Brain Balance Program supports development in this domain by engaging brain regions responsible for body and self-awareness, as well as regions in the brain that contribute to social and emotional regulation. The goal is to improve how the brain takes in, processes, and responds to information. The accuracy and coordination of the social- emotional domain affect one’s ability to read social cues, develop empathy, and engage an in age-appropriate manner with peers.
Social-Emotional Domain Research
Autism and Sensory Processing Disorders: Shared White Matter Disruption in Sensory Pathways but Divergent Connectivity in Social-Emotional Pathways
PLoS ONE, 2014
The majority of children with ASD demonstrate hyper- or hyporeactivity to sensory input. This study investigated the structural connectivity of specific white matter tracts in the brains of boys with ASD and boys with sensory processing disorder (SPD) relative to typically developing children ages eight to 12. The results showed that both groups of boys with ASD or SPD demonstrated decreased connectivity relative to controls in parieto-occipital tracts, which are involved in sensory perception and multisensory integration. However, relative to controls, the ASD group alone showed impaired connectivity in temporal tracts thought to be involved in social-emotional processing. These findings help elucidate the roles of specific brain circuits in neurodevelopmental disorders.
Sensory Over-Responsivity in Elementary School: Prevalence and Social-Emotional Correlates
Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 2009
This study followed the development of 925 kids from infancy through seven to 11 years of age to better understand the correlation between kids who experience sensory over-responsivity (SOR) with auditory and tactile stimuli with social- emotional problems. The study found that kids who experienced SOR had a higher frequency of co-occurring internalizing (depression, withdrawal), externalizing (aggression, impulsivity), and problems with dysregulation. These kids were also found to have lower levels of socially adaptable behaviors. The study concluded that early identification of sensory over-responsiveness is needed to minimize the effect of school-age children’s social-emotional status and adaptable behaviors.
The State of Evidence for Social and Emotional Learning: A Contemporary Meta-analysis of Universal School-Based SEL Interventions
Child Development, 2023
Results endorsed that compared to control conditions, students who participate in universal school-based (USB) social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions experienced significantly improved skills, attitudes, behaviors, school climate and safety, peer relationships, school functioning, and academic achievement.
How Brain Balance Strengthens the Cognitive Domain
Cognitive abilities form as a result of healthy development, which begins with motor coordination, sensory perception, rhythm and timing, and perceptual abilities. The Brain Balance Program supports foundational development and then works to engage and strengthen the core elements of cognition, including attention, memory, auditory and visual processing, logic and reasoning, and reading and comprehension.
Cognitive Domain Research
Future Directions for Examination of Brain Networks in Neurodevelopmental Disorders
Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 2018
Research over decades indicates the brain can operate as a series of interconnected networks. This review examines how these networks differ in typical versus atypical neurological development. Main findings reveal the progression of brain network integration, segregation during normal growth,
and deviations in these networks in neurodevelopmental disorders. Autism and ADHD have been extensively studied with neuroimaging, while significant insights have also been gained into network abnormalities in conditions such as schizophrenia, anxiety, and depression during adolescence. The article discusses future directions that would ideally take new developments from cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging fields and translate them to relevant clinical populations.
Neural Correlates of Cognitive Control Deficits in Children with Reading Disorder
Brain Imaging and Behavior, 2019
Children with reading disorder (RD)
have been known to show deficits in cognitive control. This study assessed neural activity during the resolution of cognitive conflict on the Simon Spatial Incompatibility task and patterns of resting-state functional connectivity from task control regions in children with RD compared to their typically developing peers. Relative to typically developing children, those with RD showed reduced functional connectivity from cingulo- opercular seeds to left hemisphere fronto-parietal and temporo-parietal reading-related regions, perhaps reflecting reduced organization of task- control circuits and reduced integration with reading-related regions. In addition, children with RD showed reduced functional connectivity between fronto- parietal and default-mode network regions. These findings suggest that altered functioning and connectivity of control circuits in the brain may contribute to cognitive control deficits in children with RD.
Strengthening Connections: Functional Connectivity and Brain Plasticity
Neuropsychology Review, 2014
This review article discusses research on the effects of practice and training on intrinsic functional connectivity in the brain. Studies have shown that practice on a range of perceptual, motor, and cognitive tasks changes functional connectivity. For example, one study the article discusses, Taubert et al. (2011), compared participants who trained on a dynamic balance task once per week for six weeks with a control group of students who did
not practice the balancing task. They found that the trained group exhibited increased “global connectedness” in the bilateral supplementary motor area (SMA), preSMA, and ventral premotor cortex—an increase that was absent in the control group. Increased intrinsic functional connectivity with parietal and frontal areas was also observed. These findings underscore the value of training in increasing functional connectivity in the brain.
Foundational Development Research
The Grasp and Other Primitive Reflexes
Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, 2003
This review article discusses research
on various primitive reflexes, which are reflexive behavioral-motor responses that typically emerge during early development and are suppressed during later stages of development to allow for the normal emergence of voluntary motor activity.
Associated Motor Problems in Healthy Preschool Children
Archives of Medical Science, 2018 “Persistence of Primitive Reflexes and
This study examined the occurrence of primitive reflexes in typically developing children ages four to six and analyzed the effect of retained primitive reflexes on psychomotor development. The results showed that retention of primitive reflexes negatively affects psychomotor skills and that the greater the intensity of the retained reflex, the lower the motor efficiency. The researchers recommend routine primitive-reflex testing in children as well as therapies to facilitate normal reflex integration.
Sensorimotor Therapy: Using Stereotypic Movements and Vestibular Stimulation to Increase Sensorimotor Proficiency of Children with Attentional and Motor Difficulties
Perceptual and Motor Skills, 2009
This study examined whether children with attentional and motor difficulties would benefit from sensorimotor therapy by using a training program that includes primitive-reflex integration along with vestibular stimulation, auditory perceptual stimulation, and gross-motor movements. The results showed significant improvement of sensorimotor skills among all three age groups examined: a younger group (seven years old or younger), a middle group (eight to 10 years old), and an older group (11 years or older). These finding suggest that a comprehensive training program that includes primitive-reflex integration may benefit typically developing children with sensorimotor difficulties and may complement regular treatment of DCD, learning disabilities, or ADHD.
Prevalence of Persistent Primary Reflexes and Motor Problems in Children with Reading Difficulties
Dyslexia, 2004
Studies have shown that some children with reading difficulties have underlying developmental delays that may be related to the persistence of primitive reflexes. This study investigated the prevalence of persistent primitive reflexes in a typically developing primary-school population (ages nine to 10). The results showed that retention of the asymmetric tonic neck reflex was found in higher levels in children with lower reading abilities compared to those with higher reading abilities. The study also found that there was a significant difference in motor abilities between the lowest- and highest-level reading groups. These findings highlight the persistence of primitive reflexes in children with reading difficulties and provide further evidence of the association between movement difficulties and reading in young children.
Nutrition Research
Dietary Patterns and Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Journal of Affective Disorders, 2019
This review and meta-analysis examines the current research to determine the extent to which diet may affect ADHD. Based on the results of 14 observational studies, researchers concluded that a healthy diet—characterized by frequent consumption of fruits and vegetables— is protective against ADHD, whereas an unhealthy diet—characterized by frequent consumption of saturated fat and refined sugar—can increase the risk of ADHD. This suggests that proper diet can reduce the chances of an individual developing hyperactivity.
Potential Neurobehavioral Effects of Synthetic Food Dyes in Children
California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, 2021
This state report investigates the effect that FDA-approved food dyes may have on behavior and brain functioning in children. The research involved suggests that synthetic food dyes can lead
to negative neurobehavioral effects
in children, with varying degrees of sensitivity among different individuals. While certain food additives are approved by the FDA, they may still have adverse effects on children’s behavior. The risk of adverse neurobehavioral reactions can be mitigated in part by avoiding synthetic food dyes.
From Probiotics to Psychobiotics: Live Beneficial Bacteria Which Act on the Brain-Gut Axis
Nutrients, 2019
This review article analyzes the relationship between probiotics, psychobiotics, and cognitive and behavioral processes. The current research suggests that while probiotic bacteria are mostly concentrated in the intestines after ingestion, they may also produce substances that act on the brain. Though this is still a new field, there are many promising results that indicate psychobiotic bacteria may be usable in the treatment of nervous system conditions.
Stopping the Leak: Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain and Beyond
Food & Nutrition Magazine, 2019
This article explores a growing body of research that points to a relationship between the intestinal microbiome and the central nervous system (CNS). Gut bacteria may play a role in certain central-nervous-system conditions, and inflammation has been shown to adversely affect the blood–brain barrier. A low-inflammatory diet could play an important role in reducing the chances and severity of certain CNS issues.
Diet and the Microbiota–Gut–Brain Axis: Sowing the Seeds of Good Mental Health
Advances in Nutrition, 2021
While experts have a general understanding of how diet affects the gut microbiome, new research is uncovering ways in which gut microorganisms can influence the brain. This review article examines new studies in the relationship between diet and brain functioning. Research in this field is still emerging, but results so far have shown a promising relationship between the gut and the brain and how diet can be used to improve brain health.
It's never too late to change your family's trajectory.
Learn More About the Published Research on the Brain Balance Program
Brain Balance has helped more than 50,000 individuals reach their true potential. We understand what you are going through, and we can help you restore balance for your child and your family. Fill out the form or call us today to learn about the assessment and how it can help your child and your family.
Ready to see what's possible?
STEP 1
Schedule a call
(70+ locations nationwide)
STEP 2
Book an assessment
(See exactly what's going on)
STEP 3
Get a personalized plan
(Built for your family)
Parents see the difference.
Review widgets by Endorsal