To evaluate balance in women with multiple sclerosis (MS) who have low disability and minimal clinical impairments as measured by the Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS), and compare them with healthy age-matched controls. Patients were aged between 18 and 64 years; 67 individuals with MS (mu = 44.0 plus or minus 1.2 years) and 45 healthy…

Previous work has highlighted delays and differences in cognitive, language, and sensorimotor functions in children diagnosed with Down syndrome (DS). However, sensory processing and visual organization abilities have not been well-examined in DS to date. This study aimed to investigate the developmental profile of sensory processing and visual…

A period of exposure to trains of simultaneous but spatially offset auditory and visual stimuli can induce a temporary shift in the perception of sound location. This phenomenon, known as the "ventriloquist aftereffect", reflects a realignment of auditory and visual spatial representations such that they approach perceptual alignment despite their…

The aim of this study was to evaluate the sensorimotor interactions between unaffected and affected sides of post-stroke subjects during locomotion. In healthy subjects, stimulation of the tibial nerve during the mid-stance phase is followed by electromyography responses not only in the ipsilateral tibialis anterior, but also in the proximal arm…

Previous research shows that sensory and motor systems interact during perception, but how these connections among systems are created during development is unknown. The current work exposes young children to novel "verbs" and objects through either (a) actively exploring the objects or (b) by seeing an experimenter interact with the objects.…

When Abe joined the program as an infant, the teachers in the classroom began to notice issues that made caring for Abe just a little more sensitive. As Abe grew into a mobile toddler, he would cover his ears when classroom noise got loud, cry when other children touched him, and often hide under tables to get away. Luckily for Abe, the staff and…

Objective: The purpose of this review of students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was to summarize the following: (1) academic deficits in math and reading, (2) possible theoretical contributors to these deficits, and (3) psychostimulant interventions that target math and reading, as well as, parallel interventions involving…

The teaching brain is a new concept that mirrors the complex, dynamic, and context-dependent nature of the learning brain. In this article, I use the structure of the human nervous system and its sensing, processing, and responding components as a framework for a re-conceptualized teaching system. This teaching system is capable of responses on an…

Many letters of the alphabet are consistently mapped to specific colors in English-speaking adults, both in the general population and in individuals with grapheme-color synaesthesia who perceive letters in color. Here, across six experiments, we tested the ubiquity of the color/letter associations with typically developing toddlers, literate…

The degree to which emotional aspects of stimuli are processed automatically is controversial. Here, we assessed the automatic elicitation of emotion-related brain potentials (ERPs) to positive, negative, and neutral words and facial expressions in an easy and superficial face-word discrimination task, for which the emotional valence was…

Two experiments investigated whether visual cues influence spatial reference frame selection for locations learned through touch. Participants experienced visual cues emphasizing specific environmental axes and later learned objects through touch. Visual cues were manipulated and haptic learning conditions were held constant. Imagined perspective…

The specific role of different parietal regions to episodic retrieval is a topic of intense debate. According to the Attention to Memory (AtoM) model, dorsal parietal cortex (DPC) mediates top-down attention processes guided by retrieval goals, whereas ventral parietal cortex (VPC) mediates bottom-up attention processes captured by the retrieval…

Weighted vests are a specific form of Sensory Integration Therapy (SIT) (Honaker, 2005a) that are intended to help individuals resolve sensory related issues thereby decreasing the symptoms (e.g., hyperness, lack of attention, etc.) of the sensory issue and are also often recommended as an intervention for problem behaviors exhibited by children…

Learning is the acquisition and storage of information as a consequence of experience. The human brain is designed in such a way that thousands bits of sensory data are processed each minute. The brain pays attention to what is relevant to daily life, always asking: "What's going on?" and "How is it important relevant to me?"…

Classroom teachers frequently use movement and sensory integration to assist their students' learning but little research exists to support its use. Although research is limited, it suggests that the use of alternative seating may provide students with an opportunity to move just enough therefore assisting children in learning more…