Brain Gym International

Brain Gym is a proprietary brain training and body movement programme. It is widely considered to be pseudoscience.

Not to be confused with Brain Balance.

Brain Gym International
Founded1987
FoundersPaul E. Dennison and Gail E. Dennison
TypeNonprofit 501(c)3 in Education
Location
Area served
Worldwide
ProductMethods purported to aid learning
WebsiteBrain Gym International

Organization

"Brain Gym International" is the trade name of the Educational Kinesiology Foundation,[1] a California nonprofit corporation that was incorporated in 1987[2] and that received its IRS ruling as a nonprofit in 1992.[3] "Brain Gym" is a registered trademark owned by the company.[4]

Business

In the 1970s, Paul and Gail Dennison developed a set of physical exercises claimed to improve children's ability to learn and to be based in neuroscience; they called their approach "educational kinesthesiology".[5][6] The company makes money training people in the methods, and licenses the right to use the "Brain Gym" trademark to people whom it trains; the trained people use branded books and other materials they buy from the company.[6][1] Schools pay the trained people to work in schools, training teachers and working with students.[5]

In 2005 the company claimed to be selling its programs in 80 countries and by 2007 it had been widely covered in the press.[7] In a 2013 article in The Economist commenting on the wave of "brain training" programs being brought to market at that time, the organization was used as an example of commercializing neuroscience in a way that scientists found unsupportable but that received widespread adoption for a time.[8] The program was adopted widely in schools in the UK and appeared on many UK government websites as of 2006.[9]

Methods

The Brain Gym program calls for children to repeat certain simple movements such as crawling, yawning, making symbols in the air, and drinking water; these are intended to "integrate", "repattern", and increase blood flow to the brain.[7][10]

Though the organization claims the methods are grounded in good neuroscience, the underlying ideas are pseudoscience.[7][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

One of the underlying ideas is that the exercises are meant to ‘balance’ the brain hemispheres so the two "sides" work together better; there is also a notion of integrating the "top" parts of the brain with the "lower" parts of the brain to integrate thought and emotion, as well as integrating visual, auditory, and motor skills;

Another idea is that of "brain buttons" - spots on the neck that if touched in certain ways, can stimulate the flow of blood to the brain.[15][18]

Another set of underlying ideas is psychomotor patterning, also known as the Doman-Delacato theory of development, which claims that if motor skills are not acquired in the correct order, the result will be a lifelong deficit in learning ability, and also claims that these deficits can be overcome by going back and learning the skipped skills; this theory and claims to improve learning based on it were discredited in the 1970s and 1980s.[7][13] An example of this in the Brain Gym method, is to have children practice crawling.[13]

See also

References
  1. "Brain Gym - FAQ". Educational Kinesiology Foundation. Retrieved November 6, 2016.
  2. "Results Detail: C1397468: Educational Kinesiology Foundation". Secretary of State of California. Retrieved November 6, 2016.
  3. "Profile: Educational Kinesiology Foundation". Guidestar. Retrieved November 6, 2016.
  4. "BRAIN GYM Trademark of Educational Kinesiology Foundation - Registration Number 2003128 - Serial Number 75007413 :: Justia Trademarks". Justia. Retrieved November 6, 2016.
  5. "House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee Evidence Check" (PDF). House of Commons. 2009.
  6. Spaulding, Lucinda S.; Mostert, Mark P.; Beam, Andrea P. (January 19, 2010). "Is Brain Gym® an Effective Educational Intervention?". Exceptionality. 18 (1): 18–30. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.674.7948. doi:10.1080/09362830903462508. S2CID 143272201.
  7. Hyatt, K. J. (April 1, 2007). "Brain Gym®: Building Stronger Brains or Wishful Thinking?". Remedial and Special Education. 28 (2): 117–124. doi:10.1177/07419325070280020201. S2CID 145748559.
  8. "Commercialising neuroscience: Brain sells". The Economist. August 10, 2013.
  9. Goldacre, Ben (March 18, 2006). "Brain Gym exercises do pupils no favours". The Guardian. Archived from the original on October 15, 2014.
  10. Goldacre, Ben (2010). "2: Brain Gym". Bad science : quacks, hacks, and big pharma flacks (First American ed.). Faber and Faber. ISBN 9781429967099.
  11. Howard-Jones, Paul A. (October 15, 2014). "Neuroscience and education: myths and messages". Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 15 (12): 817–824. doi:10.1038/nrn3817. PMID 25315391. S2CID 3346477.
  12. Rose, Hilary; Rose, Steven (June 23, 2016). "The false promise of neuroeducation". Times Educational Supplement.
  13. Howard-Jones, Paul (January 2014). "Neuroscience and Education: A Review of Educational Interventions and Approaches Informed by Neuroscience" (PDF). The Education Endowment Foundation. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 11, 2016. Retrieved November 6, 2016.
  14. Denton, Carolyn A. (Winter 2011). "Physical Exercise and Movement-Based Interventions for Dyslexia". Perspectives on Language and Literacy. 37 (1): 27–31.
  15. "Neuroscience and Education: Issues and Opportunities" (PDF). Economic and Social Research Council Teaching and Learning Research Programme. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 28, 2007.
  16. McCall, Linda Ann H. (Spring 2012). "Brain-based Pedagogy in Today's Diverse Classrooms: A Perfect Fit—But Be Careful!" (PDF). The Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin. 78 (3): 42–47.
  17. "How neuroscience is being used to spread quackery in business and education". Matt Wall. The Conversation.
  18. "Sense About Science – Brain Gym" (PDF). Sense About Science. Archived from the original on November 22, 2009. These exercises are being taught with scientific explanations. There have been a few peer reviewed scientific studies into the methods of Brain Gym, but none of them found a significant improvement in general academic skills.
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