New Church Member Letter Examples

A Prayer for Integration and sensory diet: Event

As part of the treatment of Valen, since March last year we started with Occupational Therapy. It was his music therapist
which we suggested that we had an evaluation with Leonine, occupational therapist who works at the center than she is. We said that in meetings he had with him, I was struck by the fact that when encountered or when hit, got up and continued the activity as if nothing had happened, without complaining, without touching on the site of stroke with minimal gesture of pain.
When I said what I said that I felt the same, as well, great apprehension or disgust with certain textures.
In the former handling time did not stand for long weight or get your hands dirty with paint or foam or whatever you hands dirty. I commented that this situation had improved over time thanks to the Garden, because when started in 2008 there was no way to convince him to play these materials with their little hands. But despite this improvement, by which at that time conversing with her and we had managed to touch and manipulate each of these things, still had difficulty doing so without putting a face of total disgust and without asking her way (it still did not speak) to us to run to the bathroom to wash his hands.
After an evaluation by Leo their current occupational therapist, started this type of therapy, to help and complement each other. Started going twice a week and from day one tremendous wave struck her, allowing you to enjoy every session and every game that Leo intended. We achieved many things this year, as it was (like the rest of their therapies) teamwork, and that while she worked a lot with him in his office, we also indicated a sensory diet us for who we worked with Valen at home at the time of day when we could.
we do things?: You enjoy getting your hands dirty with paint, dough, foam, cream without complaining in the slightest and instead ask for more "enchastre" I learned to brush their teeth, to re-accept other textures in food at lunchtime, and had become super selective and if you tried a meal with a texture disliked (before he was fascinated by the pure and by that time had stopped eating) began to gag, dropped his hyperactivity enough, and what brought me more satisfaction, he began to mourn and complain when he fell or was beaten, began to tell me your little hand where it hurt and even where or against what had been beaten.

wanted to share some exercises that we developed sensory diet Leo its TO, yesterday, to make it for two weeks and after that have passed the same evaluation of the results. Now that 100% start to the garden and all therapies and are more organized with the times, decided to assemble (as did several times in the course of last year) to begin to implement it again at home.
For those who are not sure that it is this sensory diet, or that it is objective, I collected information from two super blogs interesting and VIDEOTECAUTISTA ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES FOR CHILD DEVELOPMENT (to which I have on my list of "Blogs of great interest") where more clearly explained and simple is the sensory integration that is based diet:

"When we talk about the issue of management of" Tantrums "(tantrums, tantrums) mentioned that many people on the autism spectrum have sensory integration problems. Autism is a neurological disorder that affects how a person processes information. Therefore it results in problems of communication, socialization and behavior. The brain of a 80% neurotypical processing of information within the nervous system unconsciously. In For an autistic most of this process information in a conscious way that requires a great deal of cognitive energy and this is one of the reasons that the nervous system becomes overloaded.

sensory integration can be defined as the ability to have central nervous system (CNS) to interpret and organize the information captured by the various sensory organs of the body. Such information received by the brain, are analyzed and used to enable contact with our environment and respond appropriately. The sensory integration theory was created to address learning problems in children. It question rather than a specific technique, a therapeutic approach. Its creator was Dr. Jean Ayres, the American occupational therapist, who formulated the theory of sensory integration from its own investigations and also established the evaluation and treatment of sensory integration dysfunction. Ayres
defines sensory integration dysfunction as a malfunction of the organization of information within the CNS, which fails to organize sensory input to give the individual a timely and accurate information about himself and his environment. This dysfunction is often reflected in the behavior y en la Coordinación engine.

Some signs of poor sensory integration are:

1 ) Hipersensistividad the touch, light, noise, odors or any reaction to these stimuli.

2) Hyperactivity or inactivity.

3) Learning Disabilities

4) Coordination problems

5) Poor muscle tone

Some related behaviors sensory integration problems:

1) is easily distracted

2) Impulsivity

3) overstimulation

4) tantrums

5) challenging behaviors

There are three basic systems that help us stay connected with our bodies:

Touch System : The sense of touch comes from receptors in our skin and our bodies. Detects changes in temperature, pressure and pain. Very important for survival. It helps us to discriminate textures, shapes and surfaces.

Vestibular System : This consists of sensory organs located in the inner ear. It gives us balance, gravity, motion and spatial direction. Coordinates the movement of the eyes, head and eyes. This sense is essential to maintain muscle tone, coordinating the two sides, and hold head against gravity.

Proprioceptive System: This consists of receptors in muscles, joints and ligamentos.Subsconcientemente shows where each body part located. It enables the person to skillfully guide the movement of your arm or leg without having to observe each of the actions involved in these movements. Allows us to run, walk, climb and do all sorts of movements.

How can we deal with sensory issues?

sensory diet, sensory diet consists of a series of sensory activities planned to be incorporated into the daily routine of the person to help maintain the nervous system organized and focused. As we develop a sensory diet? An occupational therapist uses various scales and assessments to prepare the appropriate sensory diet for the needs of each individual. This complete sensory profiles to identify sensitivities and preferences: I will do the following questions: What kind of stimuli the child want? or avoid? It distracting? It quiet? What activities overstimulate what? Notes to the person) favorite games (running, jumping, singing) b) self-stimulation "stimming" (turns, rocking, vocalizing) c) where this annoying (bite, pull, scream) d) as quiet nn (wrap in blanket, massage, rocking, singing).

For Valentine, TO not put together a diet based on your needs. In your case more stimulation systems needed was (and remains) the tactile, vestibular and proprioceptive. Here I'll list some exercises or activities that gave us to help in these areas:

Activities to work the touch system:

• Wilbarguer Protocol (brushing): Used to do a soft bristle brush. We recommended that our OT is a "surgical brush." They are available in the homes that sold medical instruments or surgically (for those in federal capital, is achieved in the area d Faculty of Medicine is full of these houses):

exercise is passed pressure on the arms, legs and back (the torso), making a move on them in a north - south, ie up and down.
Usually this type of technique has to be made prior to the activity that is used to stimulate the manufacturing area. It is also very good for calm when they're anxious or have days of extreme hyperactivity and also at bedtime helps them relax a lot.

• Play shaving foam, this can be done on a desk or sitting on the floor. Quiet shaving cream does not stain, haha! ... This helps a lot to stimulate the tactile system and find it, once you adapt to the texture, fun.

table

• Play dough: it's good that they are of various colors, and work to exploit these concepts. Encourage you to create different things: balls, chorizitos, snake, coil the above for a snail. You can also get mold or cutting of different ways to make the dough, ESTEC to cut different sizes, etc..

• talcum Game table: TO did not give her a very original idea considering how much Valen likes playing with cars, sprinkle the powder on the table and create (using them) a track to pass and cars again for her, if reassembly is disarmed, always encouraging them to use their little hands to feel the texture.

• game table with cream and polenta, this really is pure enchastre ... I remember that at first tolerated Valentin playing with cream, but not the texture that results when Leo cream mixed with the polenta (cornmeal .) Gradually he was accepting the texture and contentísomo now asks: "more polenta, rain !!!", haha!, So that as rain adds more polenta where the cream container. They can help you encouraging them to paint their hands with this mixture and then say, "Well, now you get to paint you a vos", and smeared a little hand.

• Play the sandbox of the square: In addition to love going to the place by the games that also stimulate the vestibular manufacturing area (we'll get to it) is good to bring Baldecitos and casts and even shovels or truck or assemble cars and tracks in the sand ... A Valentine loves the latter. Thanks to the work he did with Leo, this year when we went on holiday to the coast, played a lot with his toys in the sand on the shore, wet and dry sand. Thing the previous year could not achieve much because he was disgusted even walk barefoot on it.

Activities to work the vestibular system:

• Jump on a trampoline. Already told us This year we try to buy it one, although the lack of space limits us somewhat, but we'll see.

• Paraguayan Hammock: We at home do not have, but I put this activity because it is something she does a lot with Valen in his office and that he loves. If you have the possibility is very good exercise, because in addition to stimulating this system, very relaxing. Turn it to stimulate the proprioceptive system when you lay in the hammock he puts on his little body a kind of snake (made with very long half filled with balls) and encourages him to Valen to hug to "Margarita", so named the snake made a half, lol ... And it rotates in place, upper legs, torso, back, etc.. Ball

• giant if they have one of these take out his advantage as well; acuéstenlos and move the ball forward and backward, sideways and circular.

square
• Games: swing, slide, seesaw. Incidentally, besides encouraging them, they have fun a lot.

Activities to work the proprioceptive system:

• or pancake pancho Game: in a pouf or bedtime with a thick blanket in the center and wrap. Encourage them to want to get away, roll up and roll them forward and backward. Skip

• balls with firm pressure on the body.

• Feed them grain and a drink (preferably more thick like yogurt) to make sorbet.

resistance
• rope game, putting one at each end pulling to one side and encourage them to pull them then to his famous game of the boat.

• cocontraction in proximal joints, arms and legs. This helps to organize the activity table (paint, foam, body cream and any other texture).
  

To close the topic I will copy some tips (also taken from "Videotecautista") about how and where carry out these activities:

1. Choose a place in the home free of distractions. You can use a small rug or several towels to define the work space. Prepare a "nest" with blankets and pillows where niñopueda going to calm down or relax during the day.
2. Keep the level of the person to speak, watching him in the face. Wait for eye contact.
3. Tell the person what to do before starting each activity beforehand
4.Prepare materials used. Keep it handy and let you control where the use of them.
5. Calmly wait the answer of the person. Allow time to process information
6. Use tact, touching it firmly to the attention of the person.
7. Make short work of a few minutes, and then gradually increasing the time of the activities until it can be an hour a day working with the person.
8. Avoid giving the same activity just because the person likes. Vary activities often
9. Celebrate every small achievement!
10. Include a short break of 5 to 10 minutes during the daily routine or the school routine for sensory activity for best results.

also leave the link to a slide from the same site showing examples of objects used in sensory diet:

http://videotecautista.blogspot.com/2008/05/ejemplos-de-objetos-usados-en-la-dieta.html


I hope you find it useful!.

Cupcakes in a Jar

These look extra yummy! My Nana and I were talking about cupcakes. We found these ones. I like everything on Ruby's blog. But these cupcakes are my favorite! I hope I get to make them soon! :) C

Social Learning in Antisocial Animals

In an unusual study with potentially revolutionary implications, Austrian biologists Wilkinson et al show evidence of Social learning in a non-social reptile.

Social learning means learning to do something by observing others doing it, rather than by doing it yourself. Many sociable animal species, including mammals, birds and even insects, have shown the ability to learn by observing others doing things. It's often seen as a distinct form of cognition, separate to "normal" learning, which evolved to facilitate group living. It's one of the things that everyone's favorite brain cells, mirror neurons, have been invoked to explain.

But if observational learning is a specifically social adaptation, then non-social animals would be predicted to lack this ability. One distinctly unfriendly species is the South American red-footed tortoise (Geochelone carbonaria). In the wild, they hatch from their eggs alone, and get no parental care; they live most of their lives without interacting with others.

Wilkinson et al found that red-footed tortoises can, nevertheless, learn by observation. They took four tortoises and got them to watch another "demonstrator" tortoise completing a difficult task: walking around an obstacle to get to some food (it's hard if you're a tortoise).

The observing animals all learned to do the task. In most cases, they walked around the obstacle to the right, which is what the demonstrators did, but sometimes they went left, showing that they were not simply copying the movements of the demonstrators. The wood chips on the floor of the floor of the cage were mixed up after each trial, to rule out the possibility that the tortoises were just following the smell of the demonstrator. None of four control tortoises, who got no demonstrations, managed to figure it out on their own.

The authors conclude that

The dominant hypothesis in this field claims that social learning evolved as a result of social living and therefore predicts that the tortoises would have difficulty with this task. They did not. The findings suggest that, in this case, social learning may be the result of a general ability to learn. Although the brain mechanisms that underlie the tortoises’ ability to learn socially remain unclear, it seems most likely that it is the product of a general learning mechanism that allows the tortoises to learn, through associative processes, to use the behaviour of another animal just as they would learn to use any cue in the environment.

This is a nice experiment, and the result is important: the idea that social learning is somehow evolutionarily and neurally "special" underlies a lot of modern social neuroscience. However, I'm not convinced that these tortoises can be accurately described as "non-social". Even the most anti-social species have to socialize in order to mate: no animal is an island. According to Wikipedia the red-footed tortoise has some quite elaborate (and hilarious) mating behaviours...

male to male combat is important in inducing breeding in redfoots. Male to male combat begins with a round of head bobbing from each male involved, and then proceeds to a wresting match where the males attempt to turn one another over. The succeeding male (usually the largest male) then attempts to mate with the females. The ritualistic head movements displayed by male red-foots are thought to be a method of species recognition. Other tortoise species have different challenging head movements....The unique body shape of the male redfooted tortoise facilitates the mating process by allowing him to maintain his balance during copulation while the female walks around, seemingly attempting to dislodge the male by walking under low-hanging vegetation.

Wilkinson, A., Kuenstner, K., Mueller, J., & Huber, L. (2010). Social learning in a non-social reptile (Geochelone carbonaria) Biology Letters DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0092

Social Learning in Antisocial Animals

In an unusual study with potentially revolutionary implications, Austrian biologists Wilkinson et al show evidence of Social learning in a non-social reptile.

Social learning means learning to do something by observing others doing it, rather than by doing it yourself. Many sociable animal species, including mammals, birds and even insects, have shown the ability to learn by observing others doing things. It's often seen as a distinct form of cognition, separate to "normal" learning, which evolved to facilitate group living. It's one of the things that everyone's favorite brain cells, mirror neurons, have been invoked to explain.

But if observational learning is a specifically social adaptation, then non-social animals would be predicted to lack this ability. One distinctly unfriendly species is the South American red-footed tortoise (Geochelone carbonaria). In the wild, they hatch from their eggs alone, and get no parental care; they live most of their lives without interacting with others.

Wilkinson et al found that red-footed tortoises can, nevertheless, learn by observation. They took four tortoises and got them to watch another "demonstrator" tortoise completing a difficult task: walking around an obstacle to get to some food (it's hard if you're a tortoise).

The observing animals all learned to do the task. In most cases, they walked around the obstacle to the right, which is what the demonstrators did, but sometimes they went left, showing that they were not simply copying the movements of the demonstrators. The wood chips on the floor of the floor of the cage were mixed up after each trial, to rule out the possibility that the tortoises were just following the smell of the demonstrator. None of four control tortoises, who got no demonstrations, managed to figure it out on their own.

The authors conclude that

The dominant hypothesis in this field claims that social learning evolved as a result of social living and therefore predicts that the tortoises would have difficulty with this task. They did not. The findings suggest that, in this case, social learning may be the result of a general ability to learn. Although the brain mechanisms that underlie the tortoises’ ability to learn socially remain unclear, it seems most likely that it is the product of a general learning mechanism that allows the tortoises to learn, through associative processes, to use the behaviour of another animal just as they would learn to use any cue in the environment.

This is a nice experiment, and the result is important: the idea that social learning is somehow evolutionarily and neurally "special" underlies a lot of modern social neuroscience. However, I'm not convinced that these tortoises can be accurately described as "non-social". Even the most anti-social species have to socialize in order to mate: no animal is an island. According to Wikipedia the red-footed tortoise has some quite elaborate (and hilarious) mating behaviours...

male to male combat is important in inducing breeding in redfoots. Male to male combat begins with a round of head bobbing from each male involved, and then proceeds to a wresting match where the males attempt to turn one another over. The succeeding male (usually the largest male) then attempts to mate with the females. The ritualistic head movements displayed by male red-foots are thought to be a method of species recognition. Other tortoise species have different challenging head movements....The unique body shape of the male redfooted tortoise facilitates the mating process by allowing him to maintain his balance during copulation while the female walks around, seemingly attempting to dislodge the male by walking under low-hanging vegetation.

Wilkinson, A., Kuenstner, K., Mueller, J., & Huber, L. (2010). Social learning in a non-social reptile (Geochelone carbonaria) Biology Letters DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0092

PARTICIPANDO DO CONCURSO LÁ EM PORTUGAL...

ESTAMOS AQUI HOJE. PARTICIPANDO MAIS UMA VEZ. EMBORA JÁ CLASSIFICADO PARA A 3º FASE DESTE CONCURSO.

1º concurso de Poesia Olhar Direito

Todas as Quartas um poema da 2fase, 2tema : Natureza 4 elementos

CLICK AQUI E VEJA. http://olhardireito.blogspot.com/2010/04/2-fase-tema-2-natureza-quatro-elementos.html
ESTE POEMA AINDA FAZ PARTE DA 2ª FASE. COM DUAS CATEGORIA DE POESIAS.

VOU FICAR MUITO FELIZ COM A SUA VISITA E COLABORAÇÃO. AGRADEÇO DESDE JÁ O SEU CARINHO...

LEMBRANDO: ONTEM A NOITE FALEI COM A MARCIA E ELA ESTÁ BEM. LIGUEI DE JARAGUÁ DO SUL PARA O RIO DE JANEIRO PARA SABER DA MINHA LINDA IRMÃ E MADRINHA VIRTUAL. SEGUNDO ELA, TUDO SOB CONTROLE. APESAR DO MEDO DAS CHUVAS FORTES E DESMORONAMENTO. ELA ESTÁ PREOCUPADA. POIS, MORA EM UM DOS BAIRROS, QUE ESTÁ SENDO ATINGIDO EM NITEROI..
ELA ESTÁ SEM INTERNET. POR ISSO DEIXO ESTE RECADO A TODOS.


MINHA MADRINHA E IRMÃ VIRTUAL!!!

Poetas-Um Voo Livre

Sinal de Liberdade-uma expressão de sentimento-

Blog Coletivo-Uma Interação de Amigos-

Meus Mimos-E SEUS PRESENTES-

Why Do We Dream?

A few months ago, I asked Why Do We Sleep?

That post was about sleep researcher Jerry Siegel, who argues that sleep evolved as a state of "adaptive inactivity". According to this idea, animals sleep because otherwise we'd always be active, and constant activity is a waste of energy. Sleeping for a proportion of the time conserves calories, and also keeps us safe from nocturnal predators etc.

Siegel's theory in what we might call minimalist. That's in contrast to other hypotheses which claim that sleep serves some kind of vital restorative biological function, or that it's important for memory formation, or whatever. It's a hotly debated topic.

But Siegel wasn't the first sleep minimalist. J. Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley created a storm in 1977 with The Brain As A Dream State Generator; I read somewhere that it provoked more letters to the Editor in the American Journal of Psychiatry than any other paper in that journal.

Hobson and McCarley's article was so controversial because they argued that dreams are essentially side-effects of brain activation. This was a direct attack on the Freudian view that we dream as a result of our subconscious desires, and that dreams have hidden meanings. Freudian psychoanalysis was incredibly influential in American psychiatry in the 1970s.

Freud believed that dreams exist to fulfil our fantasies, often though not always sexual ones. We dream about what we'd like to do - except we don't dream about it directly, because we find much of our desires shameful, so our minds disguise the wishes behind layers of metaphor etc. "Steep inclines, ladders and stairs, and going up or down them, are symbolic representations of the sexual act..." Interpreting the symbolism of dreams can therefore shed light on the depths of the mind.

Hobson and McCarley argued that during REM sleep, our brains are active in a similar way to when we are awake; many of the systems responsible for alertness are switched on, unlike during deep, dreamless, non-REM sleep. But of course during REM there is no sensory input (our eyes are closed), and also, we are paralysed: an inhibitory pathway blocks the spinal cord, preventing us from moving, except for our eyes - hence why it's Rapid Eye Movement sleep.

Dreams are simply a result of the "awake-like" forebrain - the "higher" perceptual, cognitive and emotional areas - trying to make sense of the input that it's receiving as a result of waves of activation arising from the brainstem. A dream is the forebrain's "best guess" at making a meaningful story out of the assortment of sensations (mostly visual) and concepts activated by these periodic waves. There's no attempt to disguise the shameful parts; the bizarreness of dreams simply reflects the fact that the input is pretty much random.

Hobson and McCarley proposed a complex physiological model in which the activation is driven by the giant cells of the pontine tegmentum. These cells fire in bursts according to a genetically hard-wired rhythm of excitation and inhibition.

The details of this model are rather less important than the fact that it reduces dreaming to a neurological side effect. This doesn't mean that the REM state has no function; maybe it does, but whatever it is, the subjective experience of dreams serves no purpose.

A lot has changed since 1977, but Hobson seems to have stuck by the basic tenets of this theory. A good recent review came out in Nature Neuroscience last year, REM sleep and dreaming. In this paper Hobson proposes that the function of REM sleep is to act as a kind of training system for the developing brain.

The internally-generated signals that arise from the brainstem (now called PGO waves) during REM help the forebrain to learn how to process information. This explains why we spend more time in REM early in life; newborns have much more REM than adults; in the womb, we are in REM almost all the time. However, these are not dreams per se because children don't start reporting experiencing dreams until about the age of 5.

Protoconscious REM sleep could therefore provide a virtual world model, complete with an emergent imaginary agent (the protoself) that moves (via fixed action patterns) through a fictive space (the internally engendered environment) and experiences strong emotion as it does so.

This is a fascinating hypothesis, although very difficult to test, and it begs the question of how useful "training" based on random, meaningless input is.

While Hobson's theory is minimalist in that it reduces dreams, at any rate in adulthood, to the status of a by-product, it doesn't leave them uninteresting. Freudian dream re-interpretation is probably ruled out ("That train represents your penis and that cat was your mother", etc.), but if dreams are our brains processing random noise, then they still provide an insight into how our brains process information. Dreams are our brains working away on their own, with the real world temporarily removed.

Of course most dreams are not going to give up life-changing insights. A few months back I had a dream which was essentially a scene-for-scene replay of the horror movie Cloverfield. It was a good dream, scarier than the movie itself, because I didn't know it was a movie. But I think all it tells me is that I was paying attention when I watched Cloverfield.

On the other hand, I have had several dreams that have made me realize important things about myself and my situation at the time. By paying attention to your dreams, you can work out how you really think, and feel, about things, what your preconceptions and preoccupations are. Sometimes.

Hobson JA, & McCarley RW (1977). The brain as a dream state generator: an activation-synthesis hypothesis of the dream process. The American journal of psychiatry, 134 (12), 1335-48 PMID: 21570

Hobson, J. (2009). REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10 (11), 803-813 DOI: 10.1038/nrn2716