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GAZE CONTROL & AUTISM
Fern Ridge Press -- Eugene, Oregon --
www.fernridgepress.com
Neurological research on Gaze Control confirms the importance of neurodevelopmental therapy
when working with autistic children and children with behavior problems:
we must treat the whole child not the individual symptoms.
For methods see fernridgepress.com.
Gaze control had never been a concern of mine when dealing with autistic children. We had done neurodevelopmental therapy that started with prenatal movements and practice what is essentially a total child approach: It attempts to make the connections in the child´s brain that for some reason or other were not there, had never been there, or had been damaged.
We almost always see changes that would be considered improvement of the "gaze" but we did not use that word.
Sixteen-year-old teenager:
Me: "I can see the changes in you -- but can you?"
Teen: "Yes, in my balance."
Me: "How can you tell?"
Teen: "On my bicycle."
Me: "Great! And you can breathe better too."
Teen:"And I can look at you now!"
Forty-year-old autistic:
"I went to church today and the telephone poles stood still!" Her nystagmus had stopped. She could now -- after three weeks stand without rocking when she talked to someone.
Thirteen-year old girl:
"Oh, there is Mary now, coming down the walk. No, that´s not Mary, Mary does not walk like that." It was Mary, but after three weeks she no longer walked with her eyes looking at the ground. She walked with her head up high like any other girl!
Tito Mukhopadhyaya, a 14 year old brilliant autistic who can talk about his condition -- he did not work with us -- was quoted in People Magazine, 12/ 23/ 2002: "I can either see or hear." He wrote, "I can´t do both at the same time!"
Please: If you have any experience in the question of "Gaze" specifically with autistics or any of the children or adults with the behavior problems on the vast spectrum of autism such as oppositional behavior, tantrum, ADD etc. please contact me at sjgold22@comcast.net or via the "Comments" section of the www.fernridgepress.com website.
Even though as we usually find it necessary we start with prenatal movements, we start seeing progress in visual improvement when we instigate movements that involve those nerves that reach the brainstem, where so many interconnections occur. These connections have only been fully mapped in the last quarter of the 20th Century.
Sally Goddard, who wrote a brilliant work: Reflexes, Learning and Behavior sent me a copy of J. Allan. Hobson´s "The Dreaming Brain" and suggested I have a look at the chapter "Consciousness in the Brain Stem." And there was a word; I´m ashamed to admit, that in my clinical research for the last 30 years had escaped my attention.
Hobson defines the term oculomotor as the eye movements commanded by brain stem neurons that send their axons to the eye muscles. " The latter´s highly complex activity, which we call gaze, is coordinated via interactions between three paired nuclei: the oculomotor nucleus (or third cranial nerve, which commands primarily vertical eye movements; the trochee nucleus (or fourth cranial nerve) which commands primarily oblique movements; and the abducens nucleus (or sixths cranial nerve, which commands primarily lateral movements." He goes on to say. "When the connections between the vestibular and the oculomotor systems are cut, as may occur in multiple sclerosis, paralysis of gaze will result!" ( J. Allan Hobson, The Dreaming Brain, Basic Books, 1988) He further connects this with the input from the proprioceptive system via the reticular formation. And there it was! The information backed what I was demonstrating in my video on autism.
Patricia Rodier had found abnormalities in the brainstem of formerly autistic adults on whom she had performed autopsies. She connected this damage with toxicity in utero. (The article, published in Scientific American, February 2000, can be found on the Internet under her name.) When a baseball player runs across a field his body is in continuous motion, but the ball stays constant in his field of vision! For many autistic children, this does not happen! As constantly moving targets, people´s faces do not remain steady in their field of vision and so they hate to look at them.
Through friends in a network of clinical therapists who work with children who have problems, I was pointed to information on "Gaze Control" through the Internet. There I found research done by A. Pellionisz on Tensorial aspects of the multidimensional approach to the vestibulo-oculomotor reflex and gaze. It was written in l985. Its beautiful neurological research gives credence to the approach given in my video "Autism, Neurological Research and Neurodevelopmental Therapy": Our neurodevelopmental approach deals with the whole child on the premise -- such as that explored by Pellionisz - that nothing in the brain works by itself! (Carl Delacato fifty years ago when he first started this type of therapy stated: "Do the whole thing, or nothing at all!" While at the time I did not understand fully why he said that, the research of hundreds of neurologists and now here the work of A. Pellionisz have shown us why our clinical work with children is not only successful, but also highly scientific.
(Svea Gold, June 2004)
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