Forbrain – Sound For Life Ltd gave us the opportunity to review their unique product in our home. Forbrain‘s tagline is: Use your voice to boost your brain. The product looked very simple: A set of headphones with a mic. How it is supposed to work is as follows:
Simply wear the headphones for s set amount of time each day and speak, read or sing. As you are doing this, the headphones (which actually sit outside the ear) replay the sound through vibration to your bones in your ear and stimulate the brain.
The purpose is to help with those who struggle with auditory processing. The replay of the sound through the bones in the ear are done so using a “dynamic filter” and this filter reacts to the intensity of your voice.
Forbrain is an expensive product, but I was very interested in trying it because I have two children with dygraphia and ADHD. One has been officially diagnosed with Asperger’s. So with that in mind, I was eager to try it with both of them, and my other children as well.
Here’s our results:
D1: Daughter with Aspberger’s: When she put on the headphones, she immediately began speaking in a more pleasant, quiet voice. Usually she has a rather loud volume level that at times is uncomfortable for others. Even repeatedly asking her to speak quieter usually yielded little or no change. She is older and was not one of our official test subjects, so she only used the product a few times due to her work and school schedule. Now that school is winding down, she has expressed interest in continuing to use it.
D2: Gifted learner with no learning or cognitive disabilities: She actually found the product “extremely uncomfortable”. When she put it on the first time it hurt her head. She said her brain felt like it hurt. She only wore it a few minutes and asked to remove it. I talked her into trying it again a week later, for singing. She did use it for her voice practice. She said she did not notice a difference. We actually took a recording of her singing with and without it. For most of us there was not discernible difference except that her diction seemed slightly improved. Since she wore it only a few minutes, this was not a true test.
S1: When he used the headphones (HE WAS THE TEST SUBJECT) I asked him to use them daily for his reading lesson. He did this joyfully. He though they were cool. He wanted to wear them more than the time he was required. I noticed a near immediate improvement in his diction and speed when using the headphones. It was as if he suddenly became aware of the sound of his reading and made improvements effortlessly. He continued to wear them for these lessons and I have seen the same result.
S2; He is a new reader. (HE WAS THE 2nd TEST SUBJECT) I noticed that when he was reading without the Forbrain he was using the sound-it-out method (For example: Cat was red like this: c c c c a t t t, c c c a a t t, cat). When using the headphones he read the words with more confidence and clarity, and less extra sounds when sounding out words (c cat) and even just the word instead of sounding out individual sounds. This was a marked improvement. However, he is also a very young reader, so it is hard to say that all of the improvement was based upon the headphones. Much f that could be because he is simply in the stage where this improves anyway.
Me: I wore them a few times, just to understand the system and how it felt to the child. I wore them while reading daily devotions out loud. I found that while wearing them I slowed down my speech and suddenly had the desire to make my speech and diction very clear.
I will try to update again in a few months and let you know if anything has changed in our opinions of this product.
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