It has been slightly over nine years since I started the Brain Clock blog (see original post here). My primary interest in exploring human brain timing stemmed from my role in an intervention study with Interactive Metronome neurotechnology. This initial interest expanded well beyond the IM technology to a mission to understand human temporal processing, temporal g, brain-clock mechanisms, brain network synchronization, etc.
Today I want to refocus on the IM intervention. Whenever I tell colleagues or other professionals of my interest (and relations with IM...see conflict of interest statement) in the synchronized metronome tapping technology, I am frequently met with skeptical "you have got to be kidding me" looks or questions. I understand, as I too was initially a serious skeptic.
Since then I have posted all available IM research literature (and significant amounts of related brain clock literature) at this blog. The most important IM-specific and general brain clock articles, studies, and other media are listed in the blogrolls on the right side bar of this blog page. Today I want to focus only on those studies that are considered "gold standard" studies (as per appropriate experimental design methods) that demonstrate treatment or intervention effectiveness.
The gold standard experimental design for demonstrating the effectiveness of an intervention or treatment is to randomly assign subjects to two (or more) groups...one group a control group that receives no treatment and the other(s) that receive the treatment(s). Efficacy for a treatment is found when the treatment group outperforms the control group on the final or post-test outcome variables. This is a VERY simplified explanation of what is typically called a randomized control design (RCD) (see RCD info here and here). RCD studies are those that should carry the most weight in evaluating a treatment's effectiveness claims.
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There are now 7 different IM RCD studies that demonstrate positive IM treatment effects for ADHD, blast-related TBI neuropsychological functioning, academics (reading and math), and golf. The studies are designated with an RCD code in the Interactive Metronome Research blog side bar. The abstracts for each study are produced below (click on images to enlarge to read).
Based on these RCD studies (as well as other IM research studies), I produced a white paper that presented explanatory hypotheses for the "why" of the IM-effect--why does it produce positive outcomes across multiple human ability domains, especially cognitively controlled domains (reading, math, neuropschological functioning, attentional control, etc.)? This MindHub Pub # 2 (The Science Behind Interactive Metronome) can be found here.
I encourage those who are interested in learning more to read the MindHub Pub manuscript and the RCD IM-specific studies (can be downloaded from the relevant Brain Clock IM Research side bar). Additional information (PPT slide shows; videos; publications) and be found at two places at the MindHub web portal (here and here). Enjoy
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