At first glance, it appears as if our ears, our eyes and inner ear (balance) work independently – and that they have their own discreet neurological pathways that co-ordinate, or manage, each individual function.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Each of these three systems talks to and receives information from the other two systems at all times. The elaborate communication system between these three major senses must be coordinated smoothly and efficiently for optimal functioning to occur. This communication is achieved through what is called an integrated system: auditory, visual and vestibular (balance).

The goal of the therapy is to assist in listening. A lot of children with autism are hyper sensitive to certain sounds and quite a number of autistic children tend to shut themselves off. Dr Tomatis found a way to re-establish the desire and reason to communicate. During a session a child listens through the DLS special equipment – that imitates what a real ear does.

For those that do not live close by us,  initial treatment can be divided into two intensive sessions, with sessions in the morning and afternoon. Two types music are used – Mozart to stimulate the ear because of the high frequencies and Gregorian Chant which has the opposite effect which is to calm. The mother’s voice is also used. Through a microphone the mother’s voice is filtered in such a way as to imitate what the child would have heard in utero, particularly in the 3rd trimester. The mother’s voice is filtered up to 8000 hertz so the lower frequencies of the mother’s voice are removed. The headphones are special as there is a part at the top which is a vibrator which delivers the information through bone conduction.

Can we change the functionality of the brain?

Yes, the ability of the brain to change is known as neuroplasticity. Wikipedia offers the following definition:

Neuroplasticity refers to the changes that occur in the organization of the brain as a result of experience. A surprising consequence of brain plasticity is that the location of a given function can move to another location in the brain as a consequence of training or brain damage. The concept of neuroplasticity challenges the mechanistic idea that each brain function has a particular location — called “localization” — that is hard-wired from birth, and the related idea that human nature is, to a large extent, fixed and unchangeable. According to the theory of neuroplasticity, thinking, learning, and acting actually change the brain’s anatomy.

Why combine movement, listening, and visual stimulation?

The 3 systems are vital to our ability to learn, pay attention, process information, and coordinate movement. As these 3 systems are so interrelated, “exercising” them simultaneously is a holistic approach which requires the brain to become better at integrating multi-sensory information. We are essentially re-training the brain to become more efficient and effective, and in the process strengthening neural connections to improve performance.

Why is the repetition of iLs activities important?

As newborns we gradually progressed from involuntary reflexive movements to more voluntary coordinated movements which, as we repeated them, became automatic. Research has shown that the cerebellum part of the brain plays an important role in this “automation” process, and when it is not doing its job well we have difficulty building patterns for further development in learning and coordination.

The cerebellum (lower back side of the brain, near the brain stem) can be likened to a powerful computer processor, transferring vast amounts of information to the movement, language, reasoning, sensory, and emotion parts of the brain; it’s role is so important that it contains more nerve cells than the rest of the brain combined.

iLs programs stimulate cerebellar activity to strengthen neural connections and, in the process, improve our ability to make skills such as reading, writing, spelling, etc. automatic.

What is the vestibular system and why is it so important?

The vestibule, located in the inner ear, has 3 main functions:

• Balance As the primary organ of equilibrium, it plays a major role in the subjective sensation of motion and spatial orientation
• Posture Vestibular input to areas of the nervous system elicit adjustments of muscle activity and body posture
• Eye Movement Vestibular input to the nervous system helps stabilize the eyes during head movements

Given these 3 functions, one can see how important the vestibular system is to our sense of balance, our posture and muscle development, and the eye tracking ability required for learning.

More Specifics on the iLs Method

• The Origin: Dr. Alfred Tomatis (1919-2001) was an ear-nose-throat doctor who pioneered the innovative audio techniques that are used throughout the world today to help those with learning challenges. Many of these techniques were first developed to help clients who were musicians and singers with vocal problems. As Dr. Tomatis used these techniques on the musicians’ children, he observed improvements in their academic performance (including improved memory, focus and attention span) as well as in their posture, co-ordination and balance.
• Plasticity: At a time when the idea of plasticity of the brain was in its infancy, Dr. Tomatis discovered that it was possible to retrain and improve the processing of sound by the brain stem and cortex using filtered music (i.e. music with certain frequency ranges removed or enhanced) and the sudden and random alteration to the pitch or tone of the music (‘gating’).
• Ears + Eyes: Your ears collect sounds, which provide critically important stimulation for the brain. They also integrate sensory information from muscle movement. An example of this is when your eyes automatically move towards an unexpected sound.
• Electrical Stimulation: Sound waves entering the outer ear are transformed into electrical impulses in the inner ear and sent to the brain; those impulses provide energy to the brain and influence our ability to focus and sustain attention. (Brain scans show, for example, that children with AD/HD lack ‘energy’ in key parts of the brain for attention and focus.)
• Relay stations to the brain: The vestibular and cochlear systems, located in the inner ear, work together to relay sensory input to the brain. They play a key role in our ability to integrate our senses, and their successful interaction is essential for language development, sensory processing and motor function.
  • More specifically, once sound arrives at the brain stem from the cochlea, the special centre in the inner ear where sound is transduced to nerve impulses, it passes upwards towards the speech center in the cortex via a number of relay stations or nuclei. The specially treated music has been designed by iLS to influence the function of the ear drum and adjacent bone, as well as improve the processing that occurs at these relay stations. So, for instance, there is an improvement in the ability to perceive where sound is coming from, thereby making it possible to perform tasks requiring convergence of information from both ears (the cochlea nucleus).
• Pitch discrimination (“selectivity”): Further on, (in the colliculus), processing influences the ability to recognize the relationship between high and lower tones and the integration of sound with other sensory information (e.g that coming from the eyes). This ability to differentiate a higher from a lower tone is critical to distinguishing between a question and statement, and determining the tone of speech. Those with poor selectivity often can not hear the tone and therefore the meaning.
• Selectivity is also important to help us distinguish between letters that sound alike. Those who struggle with the difference between a “p” and “b”, or a “t” and “d” are at a disadvantage in reading, spelling and writing.
• We read with our eyes and ears. Reading requires the ears and eyes to work together synchronously. As your eyes move from letter to letter your ear (cochlea) translates each letter into a sound. The vestibular system coordinates the eye movements and aids the synchronicity of the eyes and ears.
• Automaticity: The cerebellum, which lies immediately above the brain stem, has long been known to control the rhythm and timing of movement. The vestibular system and the cerebellum constantly interact to give expression to the rhythm and timing of complex movements. More recently, much research has been carried out on the cerebellum’s role in learning. It plays a large role in making things become automatic (an ability known as “automaticity”). When properly integrating inputs from the vestibular, auditory and visual systems, as well as the executive centers in the frontal cortex, the cerebellum allows us to practice activities until they become automatic. When the cerebellum is not functioning properly, our ability to learn is inhibited. Learning to read, for example, becomes impossibly difficult and frustrating. Imagine having to start all over again every time you tried to learn the alphabet, or ride a bike, or spell…
• Movement + filtered music. Movement, through the interaction of the vestibular system and cerebellum, maximizes the consolidation and integration of gains achieved in auditory retraining.

Psychoacoustic Techniques

The following notes explain our music processing techniques, all of which are safe and have been tested over many years of application to both children and adults.

Bone conduction: Most of us are not aware of it, but we hear sounds in 2 ways – through air conduction and bone conduction. The odd sensation of hearing our own voice on a recording and not recognizing it is because on the recording we only hear the air conducted sound of our voice. When we speak, we hear our voice through both air and bone conduction (which is why when we go to an audiologist to have our hearing checked, a vibrator is placed on the mastoid bone right behind the ear to test our bone conduction response).

Lower frequencies in particular lend themselves to conduction by bone. These frequencies seem to have a very positive effect on our vestibular function. The process is as natural and safe as listening to a church choir or talented baritone voice, yet yields significant results with iLs protocols.

Frequency Filtration: Based partly on the theory that those who can hear more of the auditory spectrum have an advantage in learning, iLs programs employ gradually increasing filtration levels. By filtering, or letting only certain frequencies through, we are able to selectively train parts of a client’s auditory spectrum, improving learning-related abilities such as pitch discrimination (selectivity), sound decoding, and auditory memory.

Gating: The muscles of the inner ear have as one of their functions the job of screening out unwanted sounds. iLs gating separates music into 2 channels, alternating (or “gating”) them, with one channel boosting high frequencies and the other channel boosting low frequencies as the music volume increases and decreases. This causes the muscles in the middle ear to continuously tighten and relax, a process that strengthens them. As the muscles become stronger so does our ability for focused listening and paying attention.

Expressive Language Training: Audio/Vocal training is incorporated into the latter part of iLs programs once the auditory foundation is in place to train our speaking voices. The training involves reading aloud and repeating phrases into a microphone, and then listening to the play-back. This develops the auditory/vocal feedback loop: Is what I am saying matching what I intended to say? Am I speaking clearly? A rich speaking voice has the natural effect of continually energizing and stimulating the brain. The audio/vocal training is also used as a means of helping those who are left-ear dominant strengthen their right ear listening capability.