Documentation of Participants’ Progress

The Brain Highways Program relies on both objective and subjective data and observation to document participants’ progress.

On the first day of the program, participants are videotaped doing a movement specific to pons development. This serves as a baseline since participants are unaware that the way in which they move coincides with various stages of pons development or that such stages are based upon whether distinct features are or are not present. Written records also detail which characteristics are observed in the video assessment.

At no point in the program are participants are given verbal directions as to how to do this specific movement. Therefore, when new, more advanced characteristics are noted in participants’ subsequent video assessments, the progression has emerged naturally, following innate neurological “wiring.” The same kind of pre-and post-documentation is done to record participants’ midbrain development.

Automatic eye-brain functions and balance (both which are supposed to be acquired naturally through early brain development) are also initially assessed. As the early centers of the brain become more developed, such functions are re-assessed, and those results are compared to the original evaluation.

Parents of children participants also keep logs, whereupon they rate specific behaviors in terms of frequency, duration, and intensity. Throughout the program, parents compare ratings on prior and current logs.

Last, additional evidence of our participant’s progress is often supported through observation and assessment by speech therapists, neurologists, pediatricians, ophthalmologists, teachers, and other professionals who are not associated with Brain Highways program. In such cases, these professionals previously documented little or no change in the child’s progress over an extensive period of time. Yet, after the child began the Brain Highways program, these professionals’ own independent assessments confirmed that significant change had occurred. While such professionals cannot often explain the unexpected change, such improvements coincide with the child’s progress indicated in our program records.