We hope you are standing up while you read this….

A newborn’s brain is only about one-quarter the size of an adult’s. It grows to about 80 percent of adult size by three years of age and 90 percent by age five (see above). This growth is largely due to changes in individual neurons and their connections, or synapses.

The truth is, most of our brain cells are formed at birth, In fact, we actually have MORE neurons BEFORE we are born. It is the formation of synapses, or connections between neurons, that actually accounts for the size change (see 1st picture above). This is largely shaped by experience and interaction with the environment.

Do you think children’s brains are less active than adults? Think again, your 3 year old’s brain is twice as active as yours! It isn’t until later in life that you actually start dialing back on some of those connections and those pathways degenerate or fade away…a process scientists call “pruning”.

How does this apply to gait? Gait depends on proprioception, or body position awareness. Your brain needs to know where your foot is, what it is standing on and so on. Proprioception, as we have discussed in other posts, is subserved by muscle and joint receptors called mechanoreceptors (muscle spindles, golgi tendon organs and type 1-4 joint mechanoreceptors to be exact). This information is fed to 2 main areas of the brain: the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum. These 2 parts of the central nervous system are interconnected on many levels.

The cerebellum is intimately associated with learning. Try this experiment. you will need a tape recorder (guess we are showing our ages, digital recorder), a timer and a moderately difficult book.

Sit down and pick a section of the book to read. start the recorder and timer and read aloud for 2 minutes. Stop reading, stop the recorder and stop the timer.

Stand up, somewhere you won’t get hurt if you fall. Stand on 1 leg (or if available, stand on a BOSU or rocker board). Open the book to a different spot. Start the timer, the recorder and start reading again for 2 minutes.

Sit back down and grab a snack. Listen to the 2 recordings and pay attention to the way you sound when you were reading, the speed, fluency and flow of words. Now think about recall. Which passage do you remember better?

The brain works best at multitasking and balance and coordination activities intimately affect learning. Having children sit in a class room and remain stationary and listen to a lecture is not the best way to learn. We always tel our students to get up and move around…

This article looks at this relationship in a slightly different way.

The Gait Guys….Sorting it out so you don’t have to.

We hope you are still standing : )

Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2011 Oct;21(5):663-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2009.01027.x. Epub 2010 Mar 11

Motor coordination as predictor of physical activity in childhood.

Lopes VP, Rodrigues LP, Maia JA, Malina RM.

Source

Department of Sports Science, Research Center in Sports Sciences, Health Sciences and Human Development (CIDESD), Bragança, Portugal. vplopes@ipb.pt

Abstract

This study considers relationships among motor coordination (MC), physical fitness (PF) and physical activity (PA) in children followed longitudinally from 6 to 10 years. It is hypothesized that MC is a significant and primary predictor of PA in children. Subjects were 142 girls and 143 boys. Height, weight and skinfolds; PA (Godin-Shephard questionnaire); MC (Körperkoordination Test für Kinder); and PF (five fitness items) were measured. Hierarchical linear modeling with MC and PF as predictors of PA was used. The retained model indicated that PA at baseline differed significantly between boys (48.3 MET/week) and girls (40.0 MET/week). The interaction of MC and 1 mile run/walk had a positive influence on level of PA. The general trend for a decrease in PA level across years was attenuated or amplified depending on initial level of MC. The estimated rate of decline in PA was negligible for children with higher levels of MC at 6 years, but was augmented by 2.58 and 2.47 units each year, respectively, for children with low and average levels of initial MC. In conclusion MC is an important predictor of PA in children 6-10 years of age.

© 2009 John Wiley & Sons A/S.

Not moving.

Not moving: the fundamental but neglected motor function.

Have you ever had a client tell you that prolonged standing is their biggest challenge ? "My feet kill me when I have to just stand in a booth at a trade show !" , or "My low back kills me when I stand for 2 hours at a cocktail party". In many of these cases, if they start to move, they feel better. I have plenty of trade show folks complaint of foot pain from the sustained standing. The muscles are under a constant sustained load, there is little to no joint movement, the ligamentous support systems undergo creep, and other things. So, i have them walk back and forth the 5-6 steps within the confines of their trade show booth. Movement is medicine. Sustaining a postural position and thus a fixed joint position over time, even with modest load, is fatiguing and eventually leads to multi-tissue failure. Sustained loading, even when suboptimal, is a problem. The nervous system becomes cranky too as discussed in the abstract below.

Here is an interesting article we are trying to get our hands on (please share if you have access to it). It is not a strong correlation to the discussion above, but there is some conceptual spill over we hope to dive deeper into, perhaps on an upcoming podcast.

Abstract

"The function of the motor system in preventing rather than initiating movement is often overlooked. Not only are its highest levels predominantly, and tonicaly, inhibitory, but in general behavior it is often intermittent, characterized by relatively short periods of activity separated by longer periods of stillness: for most of the time we are not moving, but stationary. Furthermore, these periods of immobility are not a matter of inhibition and relaxation, but require us to expend almost as much energy as when we move, and they make just as many demands on the central nervous system in controlling their performance. The mechanisms that stop movement and maintain immobility have been a greatly neglected area of the study of the brain. This paper introduces the topics to be examined in this special issue of Philosophical Transactions, discussing the various types of stopping and stillness, the problems that they impose on the motor system, the kinds of neural mechanism that underlie them and how they can go wrong.This article is part of the themed issue 'Movement suppression:brain mechanisms for stopping and stillness'."

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2017 Apr 19;372(1718). pii: 20160190. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2016.0190.

Not moving: the fundamental but neglected motor function.
Noorani I1, Carpenter RH2.

We hope you are standing up while you read this….

A newborn’s brain is only about one-quarter the size of an adult’s. It grows to about 80 percent of adult size by three years of age and 90 percent by age five (see above). This growth is largely due to changes in individual neurons and their connections, or synapses.

The truth is, most of our brain cells are formed at birth, In fact, we actually have MORE neurons BEFORE we are born. It is the formation of synapses, or connections between neurons, that actually accounts for the size change (see 1st picture above). This is largely shaped by experience and interaction with the environment.

Do you think children’s brains are less active than adults? Think again, your 3 year old’s brain is twice as active as yours! It isn’t until later in life that you actually start dialing back on some of those connections and those pathways degenerate or fade away…a process scientists call “pruning”.

How does this apply to gait? Gait depends on proprioception, or body position awareness. Your brain needs to know where your foot is, what it is standing on and so on. Proprioception, as we have discussed in other posts, is subserved by muscle and joint receptors called mechanoreceptors (muscle spindles, golgi tendon organs and type 1-4 joint mechanoreceptors to be exact). This information is fed to 2 main areas of the brain: the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum. These 2 parts of the central nervous system are interconnected on many levels.

The cerebellum is intimately associated with learning. Try this experiment. you will need a tape recorder (guess we are showing our ages, digital recorder), a timer and a moderately difficult book.

Sit down and pick a section of the book to read. start the recorder and timer and read aloud for 2 minutes. Stop reading, stop the recorder and stop the timer.

Stand up, somewhere you won’t get hurt if you fall. Stand on 1 leg (or if available, stand on a BOSU or rocker board). Open the book to a different spot. Start the timer, the recorder and start reading again for 2 minutes.

Sit back down and grab a snack. Listen to the 2 recordings and pay attention to the way you sound when you were reading, the speed, fluency and flow of words. Now think about recall. Which passage do you remember better?

The brain works best at multitasking and balance and coordination activities intimately affect learning. Having children sit in a class room and remain stationary and listen to a lecture is not the best way to learn. We always tel our students to get up and move around…

This article looks at this relationship in a slightly different way.

We hope you are still standing : )

 Lopes VP, Rodrigues LP, Maia JA, Malina RM.Motor coordination as predictor of physical activity in childhood. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2011 Oct;21(5):663-9. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0838.2009.01027.x. Epub 2010 Mar 11

Abstract

This study considers relationships among motor coordination (MC), physical fitness (PF) and physical activity (PA) in children followed longitudinally from 6 to 10 years. It is hypothesized that MC is a significant and primary predictor of PA in children. Subjects were 142 girls and 143 boys. Height, weight and skinfolds; PA (Godin-Shephard questionnaire); MC (Körperkoordination Test für Kinder); and PF (five fitness items) were measured. Hierarchical linear modeling with MC and PF as predictors of PA was used. The retained model indicated that PA at baseline differed significantly between boys (48.3 MET/week) and girls (40.0 MET/week). The interaction of MC and 1 mile run/walk had a positive influence on level of PA. The general trend for a decrease in PA level across years was attenuated or amplified depending on initial level of MC. The estimated rate of decline in PA was negligible for children with higher levels of MC at 6 years, but was augmented by 2.58 and 2.47 units each year, respectively, for children with low and average levels of initial MC. In conclusion MC is an important predictor of PA in children 6-10 years of age.

Neuro Hack of the Week

Neuro Hack of the Week.

Did you see our Facebook post on Monday of this week about children with autism spectrum disorder, physical exercise and rehabilitation, and improved learning scores? If so, this short piece while have much more meaning. If not, if you take time to go back and read it now, this will have more meaning. 

Try this at home

Sit down in a comfortable place and take a book off of the shelf which has a moderate amount of complexity to it. Open the book to any page and start a recorder (on your phone or with a dictaphone/tape recorder if your are old school). Begin reading and record your voice for approximately 1 minute.

Now standup on 1 leg in a place where you won't fall down. Open the book to a different page, start the recorder, and read for approximately 1 minute.

Go back and listen to both recordings. What did you hear? Pay attention to things like the flow of words left (called prosody), enunciation, pronunciation, and comprehension. How much do you remember for the first versus the second reading?

We have just witnessed the power of the cerebellum and it is implications in learning. If learning has a proprioceptive component, you will generally have a better understanding, better comprehension, and better pronunciation.  This is why few years ago when they did that study and schools and replaced kids desks with bicycles fitted with a desk attached to it, their test scores soared. (see here https://www.fastcoexist.com/3036607/this-school-has-bikes-instead-of-desks-and-it-turns-out-thats-a-better-way-to-learn)

When you need to learn something, stand up, walk around, balance on 1 leg, use a bosu ball, rocker board etc. Do the same with your patients. He will get much more of it, it will take last time, and your outcomes will improve.

Just a little neuro hack from The Gait Guys

GOT ENDURANCE?

We all realize the importance of endurance work, especially when it comes to core work. If we had a dollar for every patient that lacked lower back extensor endurance that had a gait problem......

In this video, Dr Ivo demonstrates his adaptation of Dr Eric Goodman's "Founders" sequence, along with some clinical commentary. Try this on yourself or with your patients/clients today. It's easy and effective.

Welcome to News You Can Use. Listen as Dr Ivo explains some twists in the standing tripod exercise.

Try it. Use it with your clients. Teach someone else