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A Vision for School Success

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What if we could identify the primary cause of reading failure in school-aged children? Or pin down a treatable factor in academic and behavioral problems among at-risk students? What if we could reduce the misdiagnosis of learning disabilities or ADD/ADHD? What if I said, WE CAN. Because those issues, and more, often come back to vision problems. I’m not implying that every child who has been labeled with a learning disability or ADHD is misdiagnosed, but the reality is that one out of every four school-aged children have an undiagnosed vision problem. One out of four!  To add to that, children typically don’t complain of visual issues because they assume how they see the world is normal. Compounding the issue further, traditional eye screenings are often inadequate. The Snellen eye chart (developed in the 1860s) measures  only what can be seen far away, and does nothing to evaluate a student’s ability to see well up-close, which is critical in order to read books or computer screens, for example.  The screening doesn’t come close to evaluating peripheral vision, depth perception, eye coordination, color vision, or focusing ability. It also provides no information about whether or not the brain and the eyes are working together to process visual information. However, many students are overlooked for visual perceptual problems because they perform well on the eye chart. Students may even walk away hearing they have 20/20 vision, and they may think their eyesight is perfect. Changing this perception is crucial to helping parents, teachers, and students themselves be on alert for visual perceptual deficits that impact learning, school performance, and even behavior. Fast Facts from the College of Optometrists in Vision Development An evaluation of the visual efficiency of beginning readers in a public school found that visual factors were the primary cause of reading failure and that most current school screenings are inadequate to detect these problems.  A study of inner city youths found that poor vision is related to academic and behavioral problems among at-risk children.  Vision problems are often typically misdiagnosed as learning disabilities or ADD/ADHD leading to special education intervention and unnecessary drug treatment of school children. Studies have shown that the correction of vision problems with vision therapy leads to significant reduction in visual symptoms and improvements in reading performance. Visual Skills and Academic Success Visual ability is fundamental to the learning process.  Students must be able to see their books, computer screens, and the whiteboard, but they then need the visual skills to both understand and respond to what they are seeing. They have to be able to organize images into letters, words, and ideas that make sense, and then they must comprehend and retain those messages. Students have to be able to maintain their focus and not lose their place when looking between the board and their notebook, and they need to be able to judge distances and coordinate their hands and eyes in order to draw a picture or hit a ball. Clearly, students make use of a variety of visual perceptual skills throughout their school day, and in order to experience success both in and out of the classroom, those visual skills must be optimized. From the moment they wake up until they fall into bed exhausted at the end of the day, they are processing visual information. In fact, it’s estimated that 80% of the information that our brains process comes from what our eyes take in. If students are experiencing a visual perceptual deficit (or several), it will impact their understanding and application of what they’re supposed to be learning in this crucial time period, and may also lead to headaches, fatigue, and other eyestrain problems. Specific Visual Skills Needed for School Success Near vision (reading/computer work) Distance vision (teacher demonstrations, ability to see whiteboard) Binocular skills Focusing skills Eye movement skills Peripheral awareness Hand-eye coordination Clearly, vision problems that go undetected and untreated leave students ill-prepared for school. Without the visual skills to succeed in the classroom, students are bound to be frustrated, act out, and experience delays and the need for special education. Alli Berman is a Brain Fitness expert and the Eye Brain Fitness Guru. She has been an artist, author, educator, creativity consultant, workshop leader,  perceptual and sensory products and programs developer, and motivational speaker for the past 30+ years. Berman has served as an educational advisor to the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine for over 30 years, and she is the founder of The Art of Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging Art. She created the PuzzleArt Therapy System in collaboration with behavioral optometrist, Susan Fisher, OD, and through consultation with neuroscientists around the world. Berman uses the system herself on a daily basis to keep her own brain as healthy, engaged, and challenged as possible! 

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PuzzleArt Therapy: Learning Through Levels

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The basic PuzzleArt Therapy System has three levels, each with several modules that help participants learn, develop, and refine a variety of skills. The levels are set up to move the participant from simple to more complex challenges, though each level and each exercise within the levels can be repeated over and over, without the risk of it becoming boring or repetitive. This is a result of the open-ended format of PuzzleArt Therapy. While there are specific directions that teach the eyes and brain to look for connections, paths, and ways to solve problems, there are no specific right or wrong answers, but instead, a plethora of potential solutions waiting to be discovered! Level One Modules  The goal of the level one modules is to familiarize one’s self with the PuzzleArt pieces, relate more closely to them, and practice working with them while developing solid breathing and relaxation practices. Through the exercises in this level, participants will first become oriented with the PuzzleArt pieces, and will be guided through exercises that help them make connections between colors, shapes, lines, edges, as well as providing them with an opportunity to manipulate the pieces to form their own patterns and designs; becoming a visual artist right from the beginning! Participants will be making these connections in a way that unifies physical movements with visual tracking. Neural pathways will be developed and strengthened while they settle in with the mesmerizing PuzzleArt pieces that are just irresistible – they are made to be touched and that is exactly what participants will want to do! As they work through the levels, participants will be challenged to break away from the obvious connections and find more subtle associations, ones that might even seem to “break” rules they didn’t even realize they were attempting to impose (for example, connecting the pieces in a way that lines, colors, or textures align but in which the actual pieces don’t square up – it sounds simple, but you’d be surprised at how many people think squares must be evenly lined up with each other in order to be “right!”).   Level Two Modules The level two modules are dynamic and creative. As participants move deeper into the PuzzleArt universe, they will learn how to expand their creative horizons. This level guides participants through a process that helps them see the pieces instead of just look at them. It then takes them through guided exercises to examine what they see, and observe how that changes as they follow the exercises. They’re then taken through a series of questions that prompts them to critically evaluate and synthesize both what they’ve seen and the process they’ve gone through. We continue to develop guided relaxation and breathing techniques in this level, as well as adding in more whole-body movements that strengthen bilateral skills. Level Three Modules The level three modules deal with feelings and emotions related to the colors, shapes, textures, and lines of the PuzzleArt pieces, but more deeply, it is about recognizing the value of owning one’s emotions, viewpoint, and perspective. Challenges in this level have the participant literally take on a new perspective of the PuzzleArt Pieces, from changing their position in relation to the pieces, changing the piece’s relationship to the viewer, and changing how the viewer uses their eyes to see what they’re working on. “[PuzzleArt] is opening my mind to see different things. I’m able to take something that’s a challenge and step back and see things from a different perspective.” — Kathy Viola, a Senior Sales Director for Mary Kay Cosmetics quoted in New York Newsday These three levels serve as an introduction to the basic PuzzleArt Therapy System, which all told, develops more than twenty skills, including: Amblyopia / Suppression Bilateral Integration Binocular Skills Cognitive and Problem-Solving Skills Creativity Directionality Gross + Fine Motor Letter + Word Recognition Memory Near / Far Focus Oculomotor Peripheral Vision Sensory PuzzleArt Protocol Spatial Relationships Visual: Closure, Discrimination, Figure /Ground, Perception Visualization And more!   Sign up today for a free brain game, and get a glimpse of what PuzzleArt Therapy is all about! Alli Berman is a Brain Fitness expert and the Eye Brain Fitness Guru. She has been an artist, author, educator, creativity consultant, workshop leader,  perceptual and sensory products and programs developer, and motivational speaker for the past 30+ years. Berman has served as an educational advisor to the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine for over 30 years, and she is the founder of The Art of Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging Art. She created the PuzzleArt Therapy System in collaboration with behavioral optometrist, Susan Fisher, OD, and through consultation with neuroscientists around the world. Berman uses the system herself on a daily basis to keep her own brain as healthy, engaged, and challenged as possible!

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Problem Solving for Life

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Every day we are all surrounded by complex problems that require decision making. Whether you are a student, a teacher, a medical professional, a parent, a businessperson – problems do not discriminate – they have a way of finding us all! And because we all face problems, we must all then solve those problems. As Karl Popper, one of the most influential philosophers of science once stated, “All life is problem solving.” Whether you are trying to resolve the national debt or manage your own finances, eradicate poverty or modify your diet and exercise routine, your problem-solving skills are put to the test on a daily basis. With all of this constant decision making happening all around us, one might think we would all be experts at problem solving, from the big issues to the mundane. But just because we do something a lot – make decisions, solve problems – doesn’t mean we’re any good at it or that we’re getting any better. Doing something over and over, the same way you’ve always done it, is likely to garner the same results. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” – Tony Robbins The problem here is that precedent and experience often guide us, and so we continue to see problems from a familiar angle. Sometimes, we need to turn the problem on its side, stand up and look at it from above, walk away from it and come back with fresh eyes. The global issues facing society today require skilled problem solvers: people who see the problems not as something to cover up with a bandaid, but as  opportunities – opportunities for change, for growth, for communication, for health, for profit, for all sorts of things! But ultimately, as opportunities – not simply as something to be dealt with, burdened by, or weighed down under. In order to look at issues with that unique perspective, we need to develop divergent thinking that helps us evaluate all the angles of an issue from a variety of perspectives and create a myriad of possible solutions. This is in contrast to the very concrete, linear way many of us have been taught to problem solve.  We often  look at a problem, logically examine it, and seek to identify the right answer – the one solution that is correct. We are taught this in school over and over. Remember when the teacher would ask a question and you would raise your hand and wave it frantically, confident that you had the correct answer? Or recall all of the standardized tests you’ve ever taken, perhaps starting with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills as a child, the SATs as a high school student, or professional exams such as the Praxis as an adult – all of those tests require an evaluation of a problem and the identification of one correct answer. We have become quite skilled at this model of convergent thinking, but this process teaches us to come to the same conclusions that someone else has already reached. Instead of searching for an answer someone else has already identified, we must become more creative in our problem solving. We must reach beyond what has already been done, and find new ways to solve problems. Divergent thinking is typically much more free-flowing and spontaneous, with a goal of generating as many solutions as possible, and making connections between ideas that might not have been made before. It is to approach the problem without the idea of looking for a single, absolute solution, but instead looking at the problem as many opportunities to be explored. “With the right perspective, any problem becomes either solvable or acceptable.” – Steve Pavlina This sort of problem solving skill must be cultivated as it doesn’t come naturally for most people. PuzzleArt Therapy provides a format to learn this incredibly important skill. It provides a process to evaluate problems from different angles, teaching participants to notice patterns and connections that might not have been immediately obvious, and the process is open-ended. There are no right or wrong answers, but instead, many solutions, and many paths to reach those solutions. Think about the great innovators of our time, people like Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet – leaders in social movements, technology, business  – they all worked to solve complex issues in new and innovative ways. They were not searching for one correct answer – but for many solutions, many opportunities. “Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.”      – Henri Kaiser Divergent thinking and out-of-the-box problem solving is crucial to the leaders of today and the future leaders of tomorrow, and we must recognize that this isn’t just an innate ability. It’s a whole mindset that can be taught, learned, and honed to shape the world around us. We can become better problem solvers, learn processes that help us develop our divergent thinking skills, and work to solve our own problems as well as those in our schools, our communities, and maybe even our world. Sign up to try PuzzleArt Therapy for yourself and begin to see the world and its problems in a new way. Alli Berman is a Brain Fitness expert and the Eye Brain Fitness Guru. She has been an artist, author, educator, creativity consultant, workshop leader,  perceptual and sensory products and programs developer, and motivational speaker for the past 30+ years. Berman has served as an educational advisor to the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine for over 30 years, and she is the founder of The Art of Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging Art. She created the PuzzleArt Therapy System in collaboration with behavioral optometrist, Susan Fisher, OD, and through consultation with neuroscientists around the world. Berman uses the system herself on a daily basis to keep her own brain as healthy, engaged, and challenged as possible!

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Visual Skills are Child\’s Play

2 Comments / Brain Fitness, Brain Fitness Products, PuzzleArt Therapy, Trainings /

Preschoolers spend their days building with blocks, manipulating puzzle pieces, coloring, cutting, and learning to function in their world. While to them this is all just play, their brains and eye are engaged in important work, developing the visual skills that will help them succeed in school and life. “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” – Fred Rogers At this unique point in child development, opportunities for growth and learning abound at every turn, and children ages 2 to 5 are fine-tuning the visual skills they developed from birth through toddlerhood, strengthening their focus, tracking, and depth perception skills. During this time, a child’s visual perceptual skills are maturing to help them progress through a variety of childhood milestones.  Preschoolers develop complex hand-eye coordination in order to learn to ride a balance bike or scooter while steering and watching where they’re going. They must coordinate gross motor skills and visual skills in order to play a sport such as soccer, and they must develop the visual perceptual abilities and fine motor skills necessary for reading and writing readiness. While most children develop along the path of visual ability without issue, the preschool years present a critical point where vision problems occur. Prevent Blindness tells us that 1 out of 20 preschoolers have a vision problem. This is the time in vision development where conditions such as strabismus (crossed eyes, where one or both eyes turns inward or outward), amblyopia or lazy eye (characterized by reduced vision in one eye because the eyes and brain are not working well together), or refractive errors (such as nearsightedness or farsightedness) develop. Those conditions – amblyopia, strabismus, and refractive error – account for the most prevalent visual disorders in the preschool demographic, and all impact the development of visual skills. In order to provide preschool-aged children with a solid foundation, we must take steps to ensure normal visual abilities are developing so that their pre-reading skills leave them ready for reading and learning in school. Children will need matching skills, which requires visual discrimination; directionality, which incorporates a visual understanding of left to right and top-to-bottom; and letter-recognition skills, which involves visual processing and memory. The American Public Heath Association recognizes the importance of children’s vision and need for visual skills, and has therefore crafted a resolution that addresses “vision screening with follow-up programs and/or vision examinations for all children prior to entry into school.” One challenging piece of the puzzle is that children often do not notice there’s a problem nor do they complain. Without a larger frame of reference, they assume this is how everyone sees and navigates the world. Any delays in development must be noted, as they may signal the presence of a vision problem and therefore, delays in the development of visual skills. If a child is having difficulty recognizing colors, shapes, or letters, they may in fact be experiencing a visual problem rather than a learning issue. Clearly, the stakes here are high: if a child is experiencing visual problems that are not addressed, he or she may enter the school system displaying developmental delays that could find that child labeled with a learning disability. This label and potential interventions would not solve the root of the problem and could add layers of other issues, such as social stigma and lowered self-esteem. Warning Signs of  Visual Problems Sitting too close to the TV or holding a book too close to their face Squinting Tilting their head to see better Frequently rubbing their eyes, even if they aren’t tired Sensitivity to light Difficulty with eye-hand-body coordination when playing ball or bike riding Avoiding coloring activities, puzzles and other detailed activities Behavioral and developmental vision care can play an important role in correcting the visual deficits of a preschool-aged child. While glasses and vision correction may be one piece of the puzzle, vision therapy can prove just as important. PuzzleArt Therapy provides fun and engaging tools and activities that strengthen over 20 skills, including ones that aid in reading-readiness and address the most common visual problems the preschool set face, including: Amblyopia Near/Far Focus Binocular Skills Bilateral Integration Letter + Word Recognition Directionality Gross + Fine Motor Skills Visualization   When you’re three, learning about the world is your main job in life. Since we all take in 80% of that world through our eyes, it is vital that any visual problems have been identified, and that the growing visual skills of the young child are properly stimulated and trained in order to help the eyes and brain communicate as effectively as possible. Alli Berman is a Brain Fitness expert and the Eye Brain Fitness Guru. She has been an artist, author, educator, creativity consultant, workshop leader,  perceptual and sensory products and programs developer, and motivational speaker for the past 30+ years. Berman has served as an educational advisor to the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine for over 30 years, and she is the founder of The Art of Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging Art. She created the PuzzleArt Therapy System in collaboration with behavioral optometrist, Susan Fisher, OD, and through consultation with neuroscientists around the world. Berman uses the system herself on a daily basis to keep her own brain as healthy, engaged, and challenged as possible!

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You Can\’t Help Getting Older But You Don\’t Have to Get OLD

Leave a Comment / Brain Fitness, Memory, PuzzleArt Therapy /

For as long as humanity has been aging, we’ve been lamenting the process. In The Maxims of Ptah-Hotep (c. 2200 BCE), Ptah wrote on aging, “. . . the progress of age changes into senility. Decay falls upon man and decline takes the place of        youth . . . The mouth is silent, speech fails him; the mind decays, remembering not the day before.” While Ptah may have been a bit melodramatic, most everyone has felt the weight of getting older. Who hasn’t walked into a room only to realize they have absolutely no idea why they’re there, or spent ages searching for an important something-or-other? Helping others combat issues of memory at any age is crucial to our success as practitioners. Memory  When memory lapses become more common, reaction times slow, or words don’t come as easily, panic often begins to set in! But as we know, this is not an inevitable part of aging! People don’t have to sit around waiting to forget what they had for breakfast! Fortunately for all of us, we can take daily initiatives to improve our memory, which greatly increases our quality of life regardless of age. From 3 to 103, we can all benefit from increased memory. Recent studies demonstrate that working memory capacity, long thought of as a constant, can be improved through training. The changes in cortical activity after training could be evidence of training-induced plasticity in our neural systems. Since working memory is essential to how the brain handles information – how we process it, integrate it, retrieve it, and apply it – this  basic functionality is vital to performing daily tasks throughout the life span. From memorizing the alphabet to learning to read, playing team sports to participating in a monthly book club, solving problems, meeting deadlines, setting and reaching goals – all of these (and more!) are dependent on working memory.  The Eyes of Memory The connections between our eyes, brain, and working memory have powerful implications. Our brains process information all of the time, and we make decisions constantly about what to attend to and what to discard. 80 percent of the sensory information the brain receives comes through our eyes, which means we need to pay particular attention to being sure the eyes know how to take in what is being seen. When someone has 20/20 vision, they may think that none of this applies to them. Of course, visual acuity is a small piece of the entire visual picture, as visual ability includes so much more: peripheral awareness, depth perception, focusing ability, eye coordination, tracking, and color vision, to name a few other perceptual factors. Since what we take in through our eyes is so crucial to how our brain processes, integrates, and reacts to information, focused time and energy should be dedicated to perceptual training. Perceptual activities are fun learning tools that can help train the brain in a multitude of ways and assist in making sense of the information the eyes are sending to the brain. Train The Eyes and The Mind Will Follow PuzzleArt Therapy is the first therapy to combine binocular, perceptual, and sensory therapy with hands-on abstract art to improve memory and overall brain function (and therefore, enjoyment of life!). This fun, engaging, and creative therapy can work in so many ways and can strengthen an incredible number of perceptual skills, including: Visual Memory Closure Figure-ground Perception Peripheral Vision Binocular Skills Near/Far Focus Visual Sequential Memory Oculomotor Skills Directionality Spatial Relationships Discrimination Cognitive and Problem-Solving Skills Bilateral Integration Amblyopia/Suppression And more! PuzzleArt Skill Builders take participants on a guided journey through the perceptual learning field, providing  perceptual activities that challenge and activate the brain, improving memory and cognition. It’s vital for people to take an active role at any age and train the eyes to truly see and fully communicate with the brain. Try one of my PuzzleArt Skill Builders for FREE today to sample a perceptual activity that trains the eyes, the body, and the brain. Check out the PuzzleArt Therapy Training for Therapists and Parents.  Alli Berman is a Brain Fitness expert and the Eye Brain Fitness Guru. She has been an artist, author, educator, creativity consultant, workshop leader,  perceptual and sensory products and programs developer, and motivational speaker for the past 30+ years. Berman has served as an educational advisor to the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine for over 30 years, and she is the founder of The Art of Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging Art. She created the PuzzleArt Therapy System in collaboration with behavioral optometrist, Susan Fisher, OD, and through consultation with neuroscientists around the world. Berman uses the system herself on a daily basis to keep her own brain as healthy, engaged, and challenged as possible!

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Stand Up for Brain Fitness!

1 Comment / Brain Fitness, PuzzleArt Therapy /

Are you sitting down to read this? You might want to change that, right now and throughout your day!   According to new research, sitting is the new smoking, but you’re probably offered a seat far more often than you’re offered a cigarette (does that even happen anymore?). In fact, we’re kind of obsessed with sitting in this country. As soon as you walk into someone’s house you’re asked politely, “Would you like a seat?” You get on the subway and immediately scan for an open bench. You spend the day sitting in your office chair. On the weekend, you catch a movie in a theater that has been renovated with seats that recline, and once you get home, you plop into your comfy armchair. We’re in a sitting epidemic, and it’s bad for our bodies and our brains! It’s time to stand up! The amount of time a person sits during the day is associated with a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and death. Many combat this by hitting the gym before or after work, trying to work in their 30 minutes of cardio, but research has now shown that sessions of vigorous exercise don’t actually make up for hours spent on your bum. “Sitting for long periods of time — when you don’t stand up, don’t move at all — tends to cause changes physiologically within your muscles. You stop breaking up fat in your bloodstream, you start getting accumulations of fat . . . in your liver, your heart and your brain. You get sleepy. You gain weight. You basically are much less healthy than if you’re moving.”  – Gretchen Reynolds, author of  The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer So how does standing impact the brain? Well, while the brain comprises only about 2% of the body’s weight, it uses about three times as much oxygen as muscles in the body do. In total, it utilizes about 20% of the oxygen that the body takes in. Getting more oxygen flowing to the brain helps maintain cognitive function, and increasing physical activity improves oxygen uptake. Those who stand up to work increase their physical activity and therefore better oxygenate their bodies and brains, helping themselves think better and faster. Better brain health is better eye health   Increasing physical activity doesn’t mean you have to join a Zumba class before work (though it’s great if you do!). Physical activity needs to be maintained throughout the day to increase oxygen flow to the body and brain, and working in a standing position does just that! It has a positive impact on work performance, creativity, and health in general. But maybe you’re thinking that standing all day just isn’t feasible for you! That’s ok – there are a lot of ways to increase the time on your feet throughout your day. Take your calls standing up, or better yet, walking Schedule a stand up meeting or brainstorming session Set your computer on your kitchen counter so that you can stand to check email/work Take 5 minute standing breaks every hour during your workday Take the stairs Park in the last parking spot available instead of the first Aim to increase your standing to 2 hrs during the work day, with an end goal of 4 hours As Gretchen Reynolds point out, “If you can also walk around your office, you get even more benefits. You will lose weight, you lessen your chance of heart disease, and you will improve your brain. But if you can do nothing else, stand up!” This week, do your brain a favor and set the alarm on your phone to go off once an hour. Use that reminder to stand up for brain health and longevity! For even more brain fitness, sign up for a free brain game to help you create your best day! Alli Berman is a Brain Fitness expert and the Eye Brain Fitness Guru. She has been an artist, author, educator, creativity consultant, workshop leader,  perceptual and sensory products and programs developer, and motivational speaker for the past 30+ years. Berman has served as an educational advisor to the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine for over 30 years, and she is the founder of The Art of Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging Art. She created the PuzzleArt Therapy System in collaboration with behavioral optometrist, Susan Fisher, OD, and through consultation with neuroscientists around the world. Berman uses the system herself on a daily basis to keep her own brain as healthy, engaged, and challenged as possible!

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Rewire Your Brain for Success!

Leave a Comment / Brain Fitness /

Do you remember the artsy kid in high school, sporting their paint-splattered clothes, Doc Martens, and bulging portfolio? Maybe you were that kid, or maybe you wanted to be that kid, but you felt you didn’t have a creative bone (or brain) in your body. Or maybe you sat in geometry class, hearing about how angle A was congruent to angle B, but not comprehending the material at all as you sat there convinced that you couldn’t master the subject because your brain just didn’t work that way. But what if you were wrong? What if you could rewire your brain? How might your life have changed if you had just been told that your brain is not locked in a set state, that it  can grow and change? If you had known that you could optimize your brain’s organization for better learning, would it have altered your success in school, or even your direction in life? Maybe, or maybe not. But now students can have that card in their back pocket, or their front parietal lobe. Brain plasticity is one of the most exciting recent discoveries of neuroscience – and one with tremendous promise of real-world application. Brain plasticity refers to our brain’s ability to change and adapt in response to experiences. That is, we can provide our brains with learning opportunities that will force our brains to grow. As we strengthen our neural networks, we will thereby increase our memory, cognitive functioning, reasoning, and problem solving abilities. Our brains are not fixed, our intelligence is not set in stone! We can use the knowledge that our brains are malleable to change our neural wiring – but how can you rewire your brain? It turns out that one of the easiest ways to improve student outcomes in the classroom is to teach students that learning can change their brain, then give them the cognitive strategies to make that happen. When students realize that learning can alter both the structure and function of their brain, they gain a measure of control and personal ownership over their learning and their brain function. Using their cognitive and metacognitive toolboxes, students hammer away on learning and learning to learn, building a better brain in the process, and experiencing academic success as a result. Improving those neural pathways can improve our brain function. For example, researchers found that boys whose brains better integrated both their left and right sides showed specific giftedness in mathematics. Activities that engage different areas of the brain help us to problem solve in new ways and allow us to see the world through a new lens. Through those new neural networks, you are able to rewire your brain. PuzzleArt Therapy uses a holistic integrative approach to help people improve their brain. This interactive art form utilizes brightly colored and highly textured PuzzleArt squares, and it provides participants with a hands-on experience that engages their mind and builds imagination. Participants explore new ways to problem-solve, and the activities help with memory, tracking, focus, and concentration. Practicing these skills in a fun, supportive, and creative environment helps build and reinforce those neural networks that are so vital to optimizing our brain functions! As students touch the pieces, explore their contours, and arrange and rearrange the pieces to form a multitude of solutions, they also create new, original art. The production of visual art is known to cause changes in our brains, and providing our brains with new experiences is exactly what helps develop neural connectivity and will help you rewire your brain. Student works on PuzzleArt Therapy Challenge Grid perceptual, oculomotor and sensory activities with behavioral optometrist, Susan Fisher, OD. We are seeing more and more that we have an integrated neural architecture, a large-scale brain network that is crucial for complex problem-solving. Training to rewire your brain in different modalities of reasoning improves our cognition, and acknowledging that our brain can change and focusing on how to make those changes, as simple as that sounds, can result in great strides – short-term academic advances or long-term life benefits! “There is a growing body of evidence in scientific and medical literature showing that ‘brain exercise’ improves a person’s learning ability, memory, and mental quickness.” —Robert Goldman, M.D., Ph.D., D.O., FAASP Chairman (WorldHealth.net) from his book, Brain Fitness Alli Berman is a Brain Fitness expert and the Eye Brain Fitness Guru. She has been an artist, author, educator, creativity consultant, workshop leader,  perceptual and sensory products and programs developer, and motivational speaker for the past 30+ years. Berman has served as an educational advisor to the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine for over 30 years, and she is the founder of The Art of Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging Art. She created the PuzzleArt Therapy System in collaboration with behavioral optometrist, Susan Fisher, OD, and through consultation with neuroscientists around the world. Berman uses the system herself on a daily basis to keep her own brain as healthy, engaged, and challenged as possible!

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Reading – Avoid the Summer Slide

Leave a Comment / Brain Fitness, Memory /

Summertime is packed with trips to the playground and the amusement park, but there is one ride you don’t want to find children on – the summer slide. The summer slide may sound like a carnival attraction, but the cute name hides a grim reality. Low-income students, despite making as much progress during the school year as their more affluent peers, lose ground in their reading skills over the summer months. This achievement gap was studied in depth by Johns Hopkins researchers, and  they felt the summer slide could be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities during elementary school.  These students lose as much as three months of reading comprehension over the summer. By the end of fifth grade, they are nearly three grade levels behind their peers. Study after study shows a direct correlation between poor reading ability and success in both school and life. This achievement gap can make the difference in whether students stay in school and go to college. Ultimately, poor reading ability can affect their communication skills, cause lower self-esteem, and result in lower average lifetime wages earned. The emotional, financial, intrapersonal, and interpersonal impact of poor reading ability cannot be overstated. Fortunately, the summer slide is avoidable! And in fact, with all of the extra time summer provides, summer is actually the perfect time to improve reading and oculomotor skills! FREE summer reading programs provide a great start for maintaining reading gains obtained during the school year, thereby avoiding the summer slide. This summer: Check with your local library or recreation center for free reading programs Read, log, and win with Pizza Hut’s Book It! Summer Reading Challenge Earn free books with Barnes and Noble’s Summer Reading Program Go on a Book Adventure with Sylvan to improve comprehension and win prizes But spending time reading is only one piece of the puzzle when the goal is to improve reading habits and ability. If a child has visual perceptual and sensory deficits, they may struggle as a reader and as a student. If a child is exhibiting signs that they are experiencing visual issues, such as sitting too close to the television or holding a book too close to their face, squinting, tilting their head to see better, rubbing their eyes even if they aren’t tired, or if they’re demonstrating difficulty with eye-hand-body coordination when playing a sport or riding a bike,  they may be experiencing a visual deficit. A behavioral optometrist can assess the child and help resolve any visual issues. Qualified behavioral optometrists can be found using the Locate a Doctor feature at the College of Optometrists in Vision Development (COVD) site. In order to find success in and out of the classroom, students with visual issues must be: Discovered and professionally diagnosed Made a part of the process in their own success Treated both professionally and in the home Retested professionally with alterations in their treatment if necessary Children need both basic and advanced reading skills to be successful in school and life. Help prepare them for their first (or next) year in school by following a daily summer reading program, having them evaluated by a behavioral optometrist if they might be experiencing a visual problem, and practice developing visual ability at home. But students want to relax in the summer! They want a break from doing work! How in the world can you get them to practice visual skills at home? This is where a crucial component comes into play – it has to be fun! A simple way to make learning fun is to turn the work into a game. In the PuzzleArt Therapy System, games and fun are built-in to the very design. While the products and exercises are all enjoyable and look deceptively simple, every level of products can help people of all ages with oculomotor, perceptual, and sensory challenges. It’s the best kind of learning – the kind you don’t realize you’re doing because you’re absorbed, challenged, and engaged! It’s learning that’s irresistible. Here is a Level One exercise from our PuzzleArt Alli Activity Books: Challenge Edition 1. Have your child  complete the entire activity every day for five days. Remember: this is a game –  a game that will help develop oculomotor and perceptual skills – but it is still a game (and games are fun!). Take unobtrusive notes as your child completes the activity – note the date, record the start and finish times, and jot down any obvious difficulties. This list can then help a professional when evaluating your child. Take action today to halt the summer slide in its tracks! Alli Berman is a Brain Fitness expert and the Eye Brain Fitness Guru. She has been an artist, author, educator, creativity consultant, workshop leader,  perceptual and sensory products and programs developer, and motivational speaker for the past 30+ years. Berman has served as an educational advisor to the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine for over 30 years, and she is the founder of The Art of Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging Art. She created the PuzzleArt Therapy System in collaboration with behavioral optometrist, Susan Fisher, OD, and through consultation with neuroscientists around the world. Berman uses the system herself on a daily basis to keep her own brain as healthy, engaged, and challenged as possible!

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Fight the Effects of Digital Addiction with the 20/20/20 Fix

Leave a Comment / Brain Fitness, PuzzleArt Therapy /

Are patients in your waiting room reading the assorted magazines your staff has carefully selected? Or are they glued to their screens, checking email, catching up on social media, or playing Candy Crush? My guess, based on the pristine covers of magazines in waiting rooms I’ve visited lately, is that they’re glued to their phones and tablets.   Just how many hours a day are we spending looking at a screen? Apparently the average American is screen-fixated for more than 11 hours per day, according to a new Nielsen report. 11 hours! It’s no wonder that we’re seeing new problems crop up from our digital addictions. Electronic screens are slowing us down – we read 25% SLOWER on screens than when we read physical books or magazines, so we spend more time on a screen just to glean the same information. That extra time increases the eye strain that we’re experiencing, but there’s more than eye strain going on here. Viewing a computer or digital screen often makes the eyes work harder, in addition to working longer. The high visual demands of screen viewing make users of computer and digital screens much more susceptible to developing vision-related problems. Those that spend 2+ hours a day with a screen (and remember, most Americans are spending 11 hours!) are highly susceptible to developing Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), which is contributing to many unhealthy eye symptom. Many people don’t even realize they’re suffering because they’ve become so used to the effects of their digital addictions! Computer Vision Syndrome can cause: Eye fatigue Blurred vision Headaches Neck pain Dry eyes Daily living with electronic devices of all sizes overworks the muscles that control your eyes. The eyes take in millions of bits of information, and we don’t stop to think twice about the visual stimulation we’re encountering. We are so used to holding screens close to our faces, making sense of pixelated images and screens with glare, that we don’t even realize that we’re putting our eyes through a strenuous workout day after day! Such repetitive stress can cause great harm, and it’s vital that we stop staring at our screens (not this second – this is important!) and think about how we can take care of our eyes, which are the gateway to our world! Fortunately, there is a simple but incredibly effective fix to help the constant eye strain we subject our poor tired eyes to, whether we are 3, 33, or 83. Simply put the 20/20/20 Rule into practice! The standard 20/20/20 Rule is: every 20 minutes, take a 20-second break and look at something 20 feet away. I’ve modified this simple tool for eye health in a way that will also boost brain fitness.  We know that brain fitness has so many different components. I’ve talked previously about the need for movement and activity to help keep the brain fit, which in turn helps the eyes. This week, let’s focus on keeping the brain active by working to maintain and increase eye fitness, because ultimately, eye health and brain fitness are intimately related. The 20/20/20 Rule for Brain and Eye Fitness 20 – every 20 minutes GET UP and walk a few steps (or more) away from your electronic device. 20 – take 3 deep breaths lasting approximately 20 seconds each. 20 – look AWAY as far as possible for 20 seconds. Make sure you actually focus on the FAR focal point. Be sure to set a timer or alarm to beep, buzz, or ding to remind you to follow the 20/20/20 Rule. It may seem annoying at first, but bring it into your life, embrace it, and it will soon become a lifelong habit as automatic as brushing your teeth. Your brain and your eyes will thank you. Parents, teach this to your kids now, before they have all kinds of health and academic issues. Make it fun or even goofy – practice silly walks or making faces during the digital break, but be sure your kids take time to stare off into space (literally) instead of just focusing in on a screen mere inches from their face. Focusing all day on close screens “locks” some of our eye muscles, and just as you can develop hamstring problems from overuse at the gym, convergence insufficiency can develop from over-straining our eyes. Peering closely at a 3” screen has to be balanced with exercising our eyes with near-far activities.   The PuzzleArt Therapy System has hundreds of activities to help develop and improve near-far ability and other visual skills that can lead to improved eye health and brain fitness. Take time today to step away from your device, breathe deeply, and look away (far, far away!) from all that draws you in on that digital screen of yours.  The 20/20/20 fix  is a great start to digital recovery and eye health! Alli Berman is a Brain Fitness expert and the Eye Brain Fitness Guru. She has been an artist, author, educator, creativity consultant, workshop leader,  perceptual and sensory products and programs developer, and motivational speaker for the past 30+ years. Berman has served as an educational advisor to the American Academy for Anti-Aging Medicine for over 30 years, and she is the founder of The Art of Rehabilitation and Anti-Aging Art. She created the PuzzleArt Therapy System in collaboration with behavioral optometrist, Susan Fisher, OD, and through consultation with neuroscientists around the world. Berman uses the system herself on a daily basis to keep her own brain as healthy, engaged, and challenged as possible!

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