Tara Marie
Sep 3, 2018 · 3 min read

What is sensory?

Sensory integration, sensory processing, sensory disorder. These are all terms that are becoming more mainstream but are so abstract and difficult to understand. I have spent four years using sensory integration in therapy and researching as much as I can regarding this topic. I am going to explain sensory and how every single one of us use it every day. I will also explain why it can be so debilitating when your sensory system is not functioning “typically”.

ALL LEARNING occurs through our sensory motor feedback loop. What this means is, our body receives some sort of sensory input from the environment (sound, touch, movement) then our brains interpret this information and produce a motor response. For example, when we talk we get sensory input through our ears for our brains to interpret. Once our brains interpret this auditory information it produces a motor output (talking) and we keep getting that sensory input and motor output constantly throughout our conversation. This is the sensory motor feedback loop.

If you were in the middle of a conversation and took a bite of food and needed to talk with your mouth full (let’s forget manners for a minute), then your brain would have to adjust your motor output to account for the change in the way it sounds when you talk with your mouth full. Your brain can appropriately adjust how your mouth is moving or where the food in your mouth is in order to talk while eating due to the auditory information it receives as well as tactile (touch) information from where the food is in your mouth. What if you couldn’t feel the food or hear it?

Think of a time when you had a cold and you were “stuffy”.. I call this feeling like my head is in a box. When you feel like this, you often can’t hear how loud your being so your brain either adjusts your voice too low because you don’t want to be screaming and not realize it or it adjusts your voice too loud to account for the lack of auditory information and you end up screaming at everyone. This is how it would feel ALL THE TIME if you had sensory processing disorder related to auditory information. This example would be if a child has an under responsive sensory system.

Now imagine that every time you heard a loud noise such as an alarm going off or sirens, you felt physical pain in your ears because of the sound. Your brain would tell your body to cover your ears or run away from the sound or you might just go into “fight or flight” mode. This is how our children with over responsive sensory systems feel ALL THE TIME. It is sometimes difficult to understand children’s behavior if we have never experienced sensory processing disorder but using these analogies to put yourself in their shoes is a great way to help you understand how they feel and why they do what they do.

Sensory processing is what makes the difference between a child having a meltdown or having a tantrum. Tantrums are behavior based and meltdowns are sensory based. If you had multiple sensory systems not processing effectively all day long, you would go into a meltdown also.

Tara Marie

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