What is Interactive Metronome
“...a unique
drug-free treatment that has shown great promise in kids
with Attention Deficit Disorder.”
CBS Early Show “HealthWatch”
The Interactive Metronome (IM) combines the concept of a musical metronome with a patented technology computerized program that accurately measures, assesses, and improves a person’s rhythm and timing. It is the only program that uses a patented auditory guidance system plus interactive exercises to improve the foundational skills essential for learning and development.
Theory
Concerns about timing and human performance go back for centuries. Many scientists believe that a human being’s capacity for timing and rhythmiticity plays an important role in a variety of behaviors including motor planning, sequencing, and cognitive functions, such as attention and academic achievement. There has been evidence that timing and rhythmiticity is an important central nervous system function that relates to a variety of cognitive and motor skills.
The core process is compromised in a variety of challenges involving attention, language, motor planning, motor coordination, social interactions, and learning disabilities, including nonverbal learning disabilities, as well as during the ageing process. In just about all advanced thinking and problem solving, the ability to plan and sequence thoughts with behaviors occurs at a basic, foundational level.
Today, there are interventions that exercise and improve the middle to higher levels of cognitive and social skills, but there have not been any that directly address and improve basic, foundational level of timing and rhythmicity.
History
The Interactive Metronome (IM) was first developed in 1992 by a man named James Cassily.
His formal education is in child psychology. He has spent over twenty years in record production, engineering and recording studio equipment design, and manufacturing. His personal interest in audiology helped him pioneer physchoacoustic audio signal processing in the recording, sound reinforcement, and broadcast fields.
The Interactive Metronome was originally developed to help professional musicians numerically test and improve timing and rhythmiticity. However, it turned out that Mr. Cassily’s first prototype of the IM was not with musicians. He was urged by a personal friend (physician who suffered a traumatic brain injury which destroyed much of the motor control area of his brain) to use it on children with severe motor skill development problems. It was quickly discovered that training with this new tool also had unexpectedly broad positive effect on individuals with learning, attention, and motor challenges, as well as those with musical and athletic gifts.
It is of note that Dr. Stanley Greenspan (founder of the DIR Model – Developmental, Individual Differences, Relationship Model and the Floortime Approach) was instrumental in helping Mr. Cassily understand the role of emotions play, and how to refine the IM’s intervention capabilities, especially with autistic children. Dr. Greenspan became the Director of Interactive Metronome Research in 1997. It was his insights into emotional aspects of child development that confirmed Mr. Cassily’s Theory of Sequentially Timed Learning.
After nearly a decade of research, the patented IM program was introduced for the first time in 1999 to qualified health professionals. In 2001, the “IM-Powered” training program was launched for mainstream applications including academic and sports performance.
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