Cognitive Flexibilty
By Michael McManmon, Ed.D., CIP Executive Director

I spent a several hours with Dr. Stark here at the Brevard Center. He hooked me up and scanned my brain in five different ways and then integrated it all together and had some preliminary results (yes, I do have a brain!).

He is working with several students with several forms of Bio-feedback and nutrition. It turns out that I am hyper-connected at 28 hertz. That explains the buzz in my head and the spike on the graph that shows that I spend and inordinate amount of time and energy hyper-vigilantly tracking data and thinking.

I have always described this as having eight computers on my frontal lobe which are spinning like the wheels on a slot machine. I am constantly integrating data and tracking everything in my world (all the CIP's, children, grand-children etc). That is one of the reasons our students have such difficulty being present in a conversation or being socially connected.

For seven years I have been a student of Asperger's and I have applied the following to help myself modulate and achieve some balance: yoga, mostly whole foods, prayer, meditation, deep pressure/exercise, massage, swimming and any water therapy I can find.

All of these have helped substantially and I am much more lucid, productive, calm and social. I have a high spike in the hyper-vigilant/ motivational area in the back of my brain. (this explains three new centers in five years). The down side is not being able to relax and enjoy as much, which I am working on.

How do we get our students to:
• Be motivated to want to change and learn flexibility?
• Is it just an external job or is it internal?
• Is it just psychologically internal or could it have to do with retraining their brain into a pattern where the buzz is lessened so that they are able to take advantage of assistance and all the good things around them?

Dr. Stark has had some amazing success down here with a couple of students. I plan on having Dr. Stark present this information to the Directors and we are working toward a comprehensive way of approaching this area. Right now each center has some alternative therapies that also assist in working on these same areas. We hope to tie the system together.