How Does Multisensory Therapy Work?
Because multisensory stimulation is as important as water and food for our survival, finding better ways to integrate sensory information is crucial for children who have sensory challenges and impairments. Children and adults who experience problems with sensory integration cannot experience the world as it is which greatly hinders quality and enjoyment of life.
Multisensory stimulation can help these individuals to bridge these barriers by providing fun and functional integrative tools and environments that inspire enhanced coherence and connection. These tools can be used at home, or for children with learning disabilities in schools or therapy centers to achieve specific and measurable therapy and educational goals. Multisensory modalities are also often utilized for adults with these sensory processing issues, and for those with dementia, Alzheimer’s and other mental challenges.
Allowing us to perceive a world of comprehensible perceptual entities, multisensory integration also explores how the senses interact with each other, affecting each other’s processing. When the brain attempts a decision on how to categorize the sensory stimuli it receives from varying objects or events in the physical world, it further integrates or segregates this information through nervous system processing. The choice to integrate or segregate these groups of temporally coinciding signals is based on the degree to which spatial and structural stimulation aligns.
Multisensory therapies employ specific strategies to both stimulate and relax the individual, often through the use of specified multisensory devices, equipment and rooms. Using auditory, tactile, kinesthetic (body movement) and visual stimulation tools, this therapy can help stimulate learning and proper sensory integration on every level. A myriad of physical and mental skills are enhanced, becoming channels of sensory information in themselves. Skill sets that include visual-spatial, musical, linguistic, body-kinesthetic, logic-mathematical, interpersonal, environmental and intrapersonal become better conduits for receiving and processing information.
What is Multisensory Equipment?
The specific devices and equipment used for multisensory integrative purposes is designed to both promote intellectual and cognitive activity along with encouraging relaxation. Specific products match specific needs, or a range of differing devices can be used at once for a more complete sensory experience.
Wheeled projectors that disperse light patterns, spotlights, fiber optics, star panels, mirror balls, UV lights and bubble lamps all provide diverse lighting effects for visual stimulation. Tactile stimulation can be provided through the use of interactive wall panels, plush toys, sensory putty, finger painting kits, changing-texture devices and various switch-activations (which also teach cause and effect). Musical devices and toys that make sounds enhance auditory processing, while specially designed toys that offer visual effects along with vibration, noise and tactile features help stimulate more of the senses at once. Aromatherapy fountains help with olfactory processing, along with tactile and auditory responses.
Rooms that are dedicated as multisensory environments can more specifically control the intensity of sensory stimulation that each user receives. They are generally set up with soft items on the floor such as beanbag chairs, pillows and mats to ensure comfort, while they utilize a wide range of various surfaces elsewhere to provide differing tactile stimulation.
Multisensory environments include many types of sensory stimulation. These items can be used by themselves or in combination to create very specified therapy sessions tailored to the individual user. Sessions can be active or passive in nature, accommodating the user’s specific interests and motivation, fulfilling their unique therapeutic and/or educational requirements.
Rehabmart is pleased to offer a wonderful assortment of state-of-the-art multisensory products from superior quality manufacturers that include Enabling Devices, Somatron, Experia USA, TFH, Skil-Care and Southpaw Enterprises.
Hulet Smith, OT
Rehabmart Co-Founder & CEO
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