This Is How to Improve Apraxia

Apraxia is a neurological condition that affects a person’s motor planning and coordination skills. In children, it can be present at birth, but it can also develop in adults from neurological events, such as brain injury, stroke, dementia, and brain disease or tumor. Apraxia can manifest in various ways involving different parts of the body:

1. Apraxia of Speech (AOS): This specifically affects the motor planning and execution of speech movements, making it difficult for individuals to produce clear and coordinated speech sounds.
2. Limb Apraxia: Limb apraxia involves difficulties in planning and executing purposeful movements with the limbs, such as reaching, grasping, or using tools.
3. Oral Apraxia: This form of apraxia affects the coordination of mouth and tongue movements, which can impact various oral activities, including speaking, swallowing, and facial expressions.
4. Apraxia of Gait: This type of apraxia involves difficulties in planning and executing walking movements.

Dyspraxia is a similar and related condition. Dyspraxia is a broader term describing the partial loss of the ability to perform skilled movements with normal accuracy. Apraxia is the complete loss of the ability.

While the exact cause of apraxia is not well understood, it is associated with damage or malfunction in the areas of the brain responsible for motor planning and execution. The exact location and extent of the brain involved varies among individuals and presents differently. Apraxia is not a motor disorder. The muscles used to execute bodily movement work fine. It’s a neurological disorder.

Apraxia originates in the brain and can be improved there.

Apraxia Hits Close to Home

We are going to focus on speech apraxia here because the owner and founder of Grey Matters, Courtney Reimmuth, has first-hand experience with it. Her son, Grey, was nonverbal and developmentally delayed in early childhood. For years, she went through the challenging maze to get him correctly diagnosed and find the right therapies to help him. In fact, that’s why she opened Grey Matters. She wanted to share the healing solutions she learned with other people. Grey is now a bubbly, fun, talkative kid who is on track with his peers in school.

Even though we’re focusing on speech apraxia here, the healing information provided applies to all types of apraxia.

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)

Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) affects a child’s ability to plan and coordinate the movements required for clear and intelligible speech. It is not that children with apraxia don’t understand speech or have intelligent thoughts. It’s just that their brains can’t successfully coordinate the signals to move their mouths, tongues, and jaws to express clear speech. It’s an incredibly frustrating condition for both the children and parents.

Some signs of CAS a child may exhibit are:

1. Lack of baby babble: A baby with apraxia will make fewer sounds and babble noticeably less. Their first words are delayed.
2. Difficulty imitating words or sounds: The CAS brain difficulties signaling impede a child’s ability to physically produce sounds and words. A child can hear and understand you, but their brain is challenged to reproduce sounds and reply.
3. Inconsistent speech sound errors: Children with CAS often produce inconsistent speech sound errors, meaning that they may pronounce a word correctly one time and incorrectly the next time. It’s hard to detect a pattern.
4. Difficulty with vowel sounds: CAS often results in vowel sound distortions and stressing words incorrectly. Additionally, it is not uncommon for CAS kids to segment longer words into syllables and vowels, saying each segment instead of blending the entire word or phrase together.
5. Difficulty with sequencing: Children with CAS may have difficulty sequencing speech sounds and syllables correctly, leading to speech that is hard to understand.
6. Groping or struggling: Because CAS involves mouth and facial motor skills, children find it challenging to move their tongues, lips, and jaws, referred to as oral groping.
7. Limited repertoire of sounds: Children with CAS may have a limited range of speech sounds they can produce, which can make their speech less intelligible and sound monotone or robotic.
8. Slow and effortful speech: CAS can cause children to speak more slowly and with greater effort compared to their peers. They can visibly struggle physically when attempting to produce speech.
9. Language development delays: Children with CAS may also experience delays in their overall language development, including grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Articulation and motor planning exercises: Therapy often includes articulation exercises to help the person learn how to produce specific speech sounds correctly. Motor planning exercises aim to improve the coordination and sequencing of speech movements.

Cueing techniques: SLPs often use cueing techniques to help individuals with apraxia. These cues can include visual, tactile, or auditory prompts to assist with speech production.

Home practice: Consistent practice at home, as recommended by the SLP, is vital for progress. Parents and caregivers can play a significant role in supporting speech therapy efforts. Family members and caregivers need to be educated about the condition and know how to help the individual with apraxia.

This Is How Neurofeedback Helps Apraxia

Neurofeedback can greatly simplify the process of helping someone with any kind of apraxia because it works directly on altering and improving brain function. Apraxia originates in the brain and can be resolved there.

Neurofeedback is a method of pinpointing and improving physical and mental health and brain issues at the root cause in the brain, permanently and without medication. It is a specialized form of biofeedback therapy, where people learn to influence their body’s autonomic nervous system at a subconscious level to function more optimally which improves or alleviates symptoms of many conditions.

Neurofeedback is a non-invasive, painless, drug-free way to teach the brain better operation, including optimizing brain wave amplitudes, enhancing connectivity between different parts of the brain, and adjusting the level of activity and responsiveness of specific brain regions. The brain learns at a subconscious level to create permanent changes that last after the training.

Children with CAS often display low brain wave functionality in the areas of the brain associated with language and motor skills. We can see this on their brain map taken initially to assess brain functionality before training. Based on their unique brain map results, we develop a customized training plan to teach their brain to perform in a way that facilitates communication between brain regions and encourages the generation of the right brainwaves to accomplish the motor planning, coordination, and movement necessary for fluid speech or movement of limbs.

Conclusion

It’s important to note that early diagnosis and intervention are crucial in managing and improving CAS and other kinds of apraxia. Neurofeedback has been shown to improve apraxia symptoms, especially when used in conjunction with other treatment methods, like speech therapy for CAS.

At Grey Matters, we are passionate about helping people live their best lives, including optimizing their brain’s health and function through neurofeedback training. Neurofeedback has been scientifically proven to help many conditions, including anxiety, depression, autism, apraxia, ADD and ADHD, concussion and brain injuries, OCD, stroke recovery, PTSD, addictions, seizure disorders, migraines, chronic pain, IBS and leaky gut, and more. Give us a call at (317) 215-7208 or send us a message today to talk about how we can help you or a loved one reach your brain’s full potential.