Did you book the day in your diary? Join us live tomorrow night.
You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Jul 7, 2020 at 19:30 London(BST) Time.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIpdeugrjMiEtyK9EyfblxlwZkLGygZb03c
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Looking forward to following this new organisation, who appear to have some amazing resources from my first drop onto their website today.
https://www.ourteenbrains.org/
From their Founder…
We are delighted to announce that Module 3 (and Module 6) have now gone online in a live interactive format. Get your internationally approved certification in Ayres’ SI.
For therapists learning Ayres’ SI during and just post-COVID-19 while travel remains tricky, we are offering this liver interactive face to face learning virtually, working with world experts in Ayres’ SI ensuring we can continue to meet ICEASI standards for sensory integration education while socially distancing.
Module 3 deepens therapist learning about Ayres SI and the sensory systems, learning about these in detail across a range of different assessment tools – including ideas about how to adapt the SIPT and Ayres’ Clin Obs for adult clinical populations.
We will explore both the SIPT and EASI – thinking about each test within these test batteries, considering how individual tests are similar and different, how they relate to each other and what they can tell us about how these tests relates to sensory challenges impacting on participation in everyday life. We explore ways to assess clients who cannot complete standardised assessment, including applying this new learning to unstructured clinical observations and ways to capture this data.
Learn more about new tools in development including changes to the SPM, and the FLIQ (Family Life Impact Questionnaire) currently being researched as part of te EASI Project. We consider a wide range of tools, their use clinically including the Adult Adolescent Sensory History.
Kath Smith and the team at ASI Wise will guide you through this learning over 4 days, where you will work with others online, complete practical activities via Zoom and at home, so that you are supported to consider how to provide comprehensive assessment, even while socially distanced.
We will also introduce you to ASI assessment via telehealth in our post-module weekly live tutor groups on gotomeeting.
To book please visit www.sensoryproject.org/shop
The news on the BBC yesterday was hard to hear and read about.
‘Utter abandonment’ of special needs families during lockdown
However, here is timely news about a support programme for parents.
We will be delivering Parenting through the Senses from 3rd August 2020, realising the project’s ultimate vision to deliver this to parents across the UK and further afield, via telehealth.
Parenting through the Senses is a culmination of work done over many years to further develop this award-winning programme, which was initially run face to face in Cornwall and via Skype to those in rural areas.
Since then, with testing of the concept further afield and in a PhD Pilot Project, we have been able to adapt and adjust the programme to benefit from the improved technologies needed to ensure a cost-effective and efficient method of delivery.
We delayed the March launch of the project starting as EASI data collection was ending, freeing up our therapists time to support the launch, focussing instead on offering COVID support to help therapists continue to practice.
More details about how parents can sign-up will follow. In the meantime, join our Sensory at Home Chat and Support Space here.
We have some incredible therapists who have volunteered their time as our special guests. We will be letting you know more about who they are over the coming weeks – Please share this with parents and families.
The use of meaningful occupation to assist people who have difficulty in achieving a healthy and balanced lifestyle and to enable an inclusive society so that all people can participate to their potential in daily occupations of life.
Townsend et al (2007)
This research may support the patterns we see in research and practice when testing children and teens with Autism with the Sensory Integration and Praxis Test.
Martínez, K. et al. (2020). Sensory-to-Cognitive Systems Integration Is Associated With Clinical Severity in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 59(3), 422–433. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2019.05.033
Impaired multisensory integration in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may arise from functional dysconnectivity among brain systems. Our study examines the functional connectivity integration between primary modal sensory regions and heteromodal processing cortex in ASD, and whether abnormalities in network integration relate to clinical severity.
We studied a sample of 55 high-functioning ASD and 64 healthy control (HC) male children and adolescents (total n = 119, age range 7−18 years). Stepwise functional connectivity analysis (SFC) was applied to resting state functional magnetic resonance images (rsfMRI) to characterize the connectivity paths that link primary sensory cortices to higher-order brain cognitive functional circuits and to relate alterations in functional connectivity integration with three clinical scales: Social Communication Questionnaire, Social Responsiveness Scale, and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales.
HC displayed typical functional connectivity transitions from primary sensory systems to association areas, but the ASD group showed altered patterns of multimodal sensory integration to heteromodal systems. Specifically, compared to the HC group, the ASD group showed the following: (1) hyperconnectivity in the visual cortex at initial link step distances; (2) hyperconnectivity between sensory unimodal regions and regions of the default mode network; and (3) hypoconnectivity between sensory unimodal regions and areas of the fronto-parietal and attentional networks. These patterns of hyper- and hypoconnectivity were associated with increased clinical severity in ASD.
Networkwise reorganization in high-functioning ASD individuals affects strategic regions of unimodal-to-heteromodal cortical integration predicting clinical severity. In addition, SFC analysis appears to be a promising approach for studying the neural pathophysiology of multisensory integration deficits in ASD.
