Dear Friends, these photos aren’t promotional pics – they represent real children, with real needs, which Berard AIT has helped over the past decade and more that I’ve been involved in this field. A year ago the little boy, H., above only had autistic jargon in English…. now he speaks his mother-tongue fluently and has even won an Eisteddfod in his local town for best interpretation of a poem …

I spoke to the mom of one of the boys above [D. is his name], this morning. She volunteered that he has had the best year in his entire academic career this year and she knows that AIT, which he’s had for the 3rd time a few months ago, has played a huge role….

I have to remind myself that it’s because of these moms and their sons and daughters that AIT has stolen my heart….. In the picture on the left are two little boys, both with developmental delays. Both have had AIT 3 times, both have made immense gains!

When Dr. Berard wrote “Hearing Equals Behavior ” the Pragmatist in him said: “Let’s just DO IT!” and he did! He chopped and changed his method to suit the needs of those whom he came to serve…. and now we’ve been cast into solid concrete – rigid, no relenting, no negotiation – the filters are the filters, the rules are the rules and somewhere in all of this, I mourn, because we’ve lost the heart of AIT, the spirit and the vision that brings change, because AIT is a change agent in the lives of the countless thousands who have been treated and can testify to what it set in motion in their lives….

So, perhaps our contribution is only a drop in the bucket. I’d like to think that what you and I have contributed in terms of life and healing in the lives of scores of children counts for something – we’ve done a great work, just because we’ve flung ourselves on the principles of a rather reckless pragmatist, whose method turned broken lives into something amazingly valuable and vibrantly alive!

When Dr. Berard wrote “Hearing Equals Behavior ” the Pragmatist in him said: “Let’s just DO IT!” and he did! He chopped and changed his method to suit the needs of those whom he came to serve…. and now we’ve been cast into solid concrete – rigid, no relenting, no negotiation – the filters are the filters, the rules are the rules and somewhere in all of this, I mourn, because we’ve lost the heart of AIT, the spirit and the vision that brings change, because AIT is a change agent in the lives of the countless thousands who have been treated and can testify to what it set in motion in their lives….

So, perhaps our contribution is only a drop in the bucket. I’d like to think that what you and I have contributed in terms of life and healing in the lives of scores of children counts for something – we’ve done a great work, just because we’ve flung ourselves on the principles of a rather reckless pragmatist, whose method turned broken lives into something amazingly valuable and vibrantly alive!

You see it in their eyes – the pain, the lost-ness, the longing to belong and to deep yearning to communicate and be heard. Above is one of the most courageous little guys, a real “cool dude” as he likes to be called, who has fought his battle with Cerebral Palsy and won; who scaled the walls of autism and triumphed; who struck a breech into the cold, dark walls of speech delay and emerged with vibrancy – a voice to remember, a boy to salute.

Without you, Dr. Berard, all these amazing victories would never have been possible! I salute you, the children and parents of the world salute you -your work and the years of wisdom that gave us the flexible, dynamic tool to work wonders in broken brains!

Thanks for what you did to release AIT into the hands of faithful practitioners. We don’t hold it against you that in the closing chapters of your life, you trembled and faltered – uncertain whether this great work would survive, and bequeathed you life’ work into the hands of ones less honorable than yourself. Sadly greed now threatens to steal the light and leave many to curse the dark as many endeavour to make AIT unattainably expensive and wish to entrench it in the practices of only a few select people. I implore those who have chosen personal profit above the joy of setting lives on fire with skill, to PLEASE re-think and look long and hard at these faces and what they represent, before you close down our practices and with it the gift that it is as we impart our knowledge and Berard-styled magic to the LD world.

Melanin, a form of pigments, doesn’t only occur in the skin, brain and eyes.  In humans, melanin[ii] is found in skin, hair, the pigmented tissue underlying the iris, the medulla and zona reticularis of the adrenal gland, the bones, heart, the stria vascularis of the inner ear, and in pigment-bearing neurons of certain deep brain nuclei such as the locus ceruleus and the substantia nigra. The area in the ear, called the stria vascularis, where melanin is found, is of special importance to AIT as it possibly represents both a locus of toxicity and a rationale for a probable mechanism for detoxification, as it is energized by acoustic energy, likely aiding in the restoration of auditory lesions through intensive acoustic stimulation.  Melanin Containing Hormone R2 is only found in some primates and carnivores, including ferrets, dogs and man.

Larsson[iii] explains that various drugs and other chemicals, such as organic amines, metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, etc., are bound to melanin and retained in pigmented tissues for long periods. He stresses that the physiological significance of the binding is not evident, but it has been suggested that the melanin protects the pigmented cells and adjacent tissues by absorbing potentially harmful substances, which then are slowly released in nontoxic concentrations.

Long-term exposure, on the other hand, may build up high levels of noxious chemicals, stored on the melanin, which ultimately may cause degeneration in the melanin-containing cells, and secondary lesions in surrounding tissues. E.g. in the inner ear, the pigmented cells are located close to the receptor cells, and melanin binding may be an important factor in the development of some inner ear lesions. He speculates that neuromelanin in the brain, is present in nerve cells in the extra pyramidal system, and the melanin affinity of certain neurotoxic agents may be involved in the development of parkinsonism, and possibly tardive dyskinesia, whereas I would like to speculate that in young children, it might be one of the key contributing reasons why we see such significant sensory disturbances (ocular and auditory) in children with autism.

In an interesting article[iv] a webpage documents that researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia can now detect the spread of skin cancer cells through the blood by literally listening to their sound.  The method used is photo-acoustic detection, whereby both laser and ultra-sound are combined to make the cells vibrate (laser) and then the vibrations are registered by means of the ultrasound equipment, hence giving researchers the high-pitched sound of melanoma cells.  Melanin can absorb energy, either photic or acoustic.  The author writes: “The dark, microscopic granules of melanin contained in the cancer cells absorb the energy bursts from the blue laser light, going through rapid cycles of expanding as they heat up and shrinking as they cool down. These sudden changes generate loud cracks — relative to the granules’ size — which propagate in the solution like tiny tsunamis.”  For the first time a technological breakthrough like the one cited above, gives us the possibility of registering the sound from energy accumulating melanin receptors, that can be recorded.   “The sound waves produced by melanin are high-frequency ultrasounds, meaning that they cannot be heard by the human ear, even if amplified. However, researchers can pick them up with special microphones and analyze them with a compute”.

The implications for AIT is that in order to stimulate the stria vascularis to produce more endolymph, and to release toxic compounds bound to these cells, there needs to be fast-paced, high frequency acoustic energy bursts present in the modulated music.

Melanin in the Stria Vascularis is also thought to play a role in noise-induced hearing loss, report Bartels et al. [v] in their summary of their research on different coloured mice.

A factor that influences one’s susceptibility to noise might be regulated in the stria vascularis by means of melanin. In their research, Barrenäs et al [vi] report that changes in the melanin morphology, concentration and distribution have been correlated to the development of the inner ear and to the time period during which hearing function is established, which indicates that the melanocytes in the stria vascularis are of importance for the hearing function.

I hereby hypothesize that early exposure to toxic metals (in utero) or shortly after birth, might predispose some children to significant susceptibility to noise, as the melanocytes bind toxic metals and might cause inner ear lesions.

This is exactly what AIT offers – fast-paced alternation between high and low frequency bursts with a high margin of randomicity.

Bibiography

[i] Nordlund,J.J., Boissy, R.E., Hearing, V.J., King, R.A., Oetting, W.S. & Ortonne, J.P. , 2006. The Pigmentary System, 2nd Ed., Wiley-Blackwell.

[ii]http://www.biosupply.co.uk/3512/Assays-and-Kits-ELISA-Kits/Melanin-Concentrating-Hormone-(MCH)-EIA-Kit.htm

[iii] Larsson, B.S. 1993. Interaction Between Chemicals and Melanin. Wiley Inner Science.

[iv] Listening to the Sound of Skin Cancer inOptic Letters, Optical Society of America cited in http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Listening-to-the-Sound-of-Skin-Cancer-15127-1/

[v] Bartels, S., Ito, S., Trune, D.R. & Nuttall, A.L., 2001. Noise-induced hearing loss: the effect of melanin in the stria vascularis. Elsevier Science B.V. In Hearing Research Volume 154, Issues 1-2, April 2001, Pages 116-123. References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

[vi] Barrenäs ML, Axelsson A. The development of melanin in the stria vascularis of the gerbil. In Acta Otolaryngol. 1992;112(1):50-8.