Help the brain to develop new connections. Show it the road.
One of the most significant scientific developments of the early 21st century has been the discovery of the extent to which neurons and neural connections can grow throughout the human lifespan. With 87 billion neurons and the possibility that each of these can establish as many as 30,000 connections, the possibilities for brain development are endless.
A few decades ago, scientists thought the brain was relatively fixed. It was believed that after childhood, no new neurons grew and certain neural pathways became fixed. It was also believed that different areas of the brain were dedicated to their own specialties and never deviated from them. Now we know that the brain is much more nuanced than that. New neurons do grow, in certain areas of the brain, and throughout the lifespan. More importantly, new neural pathways can be formed and, when disease or damage occurs in one part of the brain, cortical maps can be redrawn to make up for the lost function. This ability of the brain to change is known as neuroplasticity (also called brain plasticity). It is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.
If it is now well accepted that the brain is not fixed and can establish new connections, but it is still not clear how we can support and facilitate this change. During childhood, while the brain is very immature, this plasticity is maximal. Babies are able to integrate a huge amount of behaviors and information and develop neuronal networks to compensate for damage or disease. In fact, the way our brain integrates and processes sensory information from our birth should help us to understand how we could encourage brain plasticity lifelong. We estimate that 3 components are fundamental in the process of strengthening neural connections, just like a baby who is learning to speak his mother tongue:
Interest
Of course, our own motivation is fundamental but here we are talking about “brain interest” much more than personal motivation. We need to capture the brain’s attention to activate its interest. The more mature the brain is, the more difficult it is to capture its attention. In SOUNDSORY®, the music is processed with a dynamic filter which is designed to capture the brain’s attention, like a baby naturally would with new sounds and melodies, to integrate their mother tongue.
Intensity
In the process of strengthening neural connections, the brain needs an intense sensory workout. This ear system is perfectly appropriate to serve this task as 70% of brain stimulation comes from it. The combination of both bone conduction and motor movement exercises makes the SOUNDSORY® sessions, an intense program that educates the brain to better integrate multi-sensory information.
Repetition
We did not wake up one day with the ability to speak our mother tongue or ride a bicycle. The brain needs time and repetition to explore new routes and pathways, like babbling before speaking. Building our brain requires time and repetition. The good news is once the brain establishes new connections; with time, it can transform those routes into highways. For this reason, SOUNDSORY® is designed to be repeated for 40 days with a mix of music sessions and body movement exercises.
