Description
This workshop explores two essential but sometimes under-recognised contributors to movement and praxis: the visual system and the cerebellum. It begins by examining vision not only as a system for seeing clearly, but as a core sensory system for postural control, spatial orientation, visual attention, movement through space, imitation, social interaction and adaptive responses.
Participants are introduced to key visual functions, including contrast and motion detection, visual fields, eye movements, visual memory, pattern recognition, visual cognition and the role of vision in balance and postural control. The session also considers how visual processing differences may influence movement, copying, reading, reaching, spatial awareness, social interaction, and visual-motor performance.
The workshop then moves into the cerebellum as a highly integrative structure that supports coordinated movement, postural set, timing, sequencing, motor learning, prediction, error correction, arousal and regulation. Rather than viewing the cerebellum only as a motor structure, the session highlights its wider role in linking sensory input, movement, cognition, emotion and adaptive action.
Through teaching, discussion and video-based clinical reasoning, participants are supported to think more carefully about how visual, vestibular, proprioceptive, tactile, auditory and reticular systems work together. The session helps therapists move beyond broad observations, such as poor balance, clumsiness, poor attention, or poor coordination, towards more precise hypotheses about the sensory-motor systems that may be contributing to functional challenges.
Learning outcomes
By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- describe key visual functions that support postural control, movement, praxis and visual motor performance
- explain how vision interacts with vestibular, proprioceptive, tactile and auditory systems to support balance, spatial orientation and movement through space
- identify how visual processing differences may influence copying, reaching, movement planning, reading, social interaction and participation
- recognise the role of the cerebellum in coordinated movement, postural control, timing, sequencing, prediction and motor learning
- discuss how sensory input, arousal and movement interact through reticular, vestibular, visual and cerebellar pathways
- use clinical observation and video examples to generate more precise hypotheses about sensory motor contributions to movement and praxis challenges
- reflect on how active, varied and meaningful movement experiences can support motor learning and adaptive action
Participants will learn it through focused teaching, clinical explanation and video observation, discuss the visual and cerebellar contributions to praxis, apply the ideas to real clinical examples, reflect on assessment and intervention reasoning, and take the learning back into practice through more precise sensory motor thinking.
