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Tomatis, Autism and Sensory Integration

.......Tomatis Topics

A s Tomatis' research has shown every cell in the skin is an ear that that picks up sound waves.

Other research reveals that each stratum of muscle fiber has a muscle spindle with a minuscule nerve ending connected to the peripheral nervous system and to the cerebellum. It is the cerebellum that coordinates the timing of movements including the movements involved in speech. (Bio of Trans-JCP 100-101) This sound sensitive network of listening cells, muscle spindles and cerebellar connections in turn becomes increasingly selective to speech sounds and eventually to single phonemes.

This is important in how the newborn transforms from the grosser perceptions of speech sounds through bone conduction to the more refined perception of air conduction through the skin. The rhythm and structure of the language spoken by the mother will also be imprinted on the nervous system of the developing fetus.

Noam Chomsky - Article in Psychology Today, 1976 said "all human languages share deep-seated properties of organization and structure. These properties-these linguistic universals - can be assumed to be an innate mental endowment rather than the result of learning. There is no such thing as gibberish. Even the languages of the most primitive tribes are grammatically and syntactically complete Newborns prefer their mother's voice over all others, more specifically; they prefer her intonation pattern to all others.

Tomatis contended that the voice of the mother speaking and singing plays a key role in the child's language acquisition and development in social communication skills. The Mother's voice provides a connection between the fetal and the birth world and its loss can have significant impact. Most importantly the mother voice kindled the desire to deploy one's listening for communication.

I t is important to note that the Vestibular system is the first sensory system to develop in utero. At 4 1/2 months gestation the ear is complete and adult size, except for the outer ear. Mylinzation to the temporal lobe is started and complete at birth. Not only did he say that the fetus was listening but it was listening to the mother's via bone conduction from the mothers' larynx to her spinal column to the fetus bone structure. Tomatis felt that this early listening played an important role in inviting the fetus to communicate, develop language, and learn.


Evolution of Listening -The Vestibular-Cochlear System

He believes that the ear in its vestibular labyrinth is no less than the primary organ of our emerging consciousness. In its evolutionary role, Tomatis attributed the vestibular labyrinth with bringing man to his upright posture or verticality. It also man to gnosis (motor planning) and laterality. "The skin, our muscle, our joint, everything that brings information and charge into our nervous system is tied into the ear's vestibular labyrinth. It is the ear that keeps all these under control."

E volution of Listening - The Nervous System grew out of the Ear Tomatis came to the vestibular system from his desire to understand the processes of communication. He found the vestibular system when looking for the first phylogenetic organ of communication. He saw the vestibular system as the first system of communication phylogentically. The primitive vestibular system and it's relationship to gravity, was the first relating from inner life to outer life. One of Tomatis' axiom is "The nervous system grew out of the ear." In this he was talking about the primacy of the vestibular system and its ability to impact on the developing nervous system.

Ear as Neurological Organizer

Functions of the Ear - It serves as the centralizing, controlling organ of neurological function. Tomatis was at a difficult point in his career. He had to decide between continuing his medical and surgical profession as an oto-rhino-laryngologist, and thus put his research on hold or he could concentrate on continuing his research and treatment with the aid of his newly elaborated techniques. He found himself at an impasse for a long time. The results he was obtaining from the Electronic Ear did not correspond with the theories of the time. As you can judge by now Tomatis didn't view the ear as merely a mechanism of hearing. He viewed the ear as having a primordial role in the humanization of man. He saw the ear as the source of upright posture and the source of thought and language. Tomatis emphasized that the functions of the human ear far exceed those traditionally assigned to it. "It serves as the centralizing, controlling organ of neurological function."

Functions of the Ear

Tomatis felt that we were at an impasse in understanding how the ear works because we primarily attributed an auditory function to it. But Tomatis insisted that the ear is not made for hearing. It is easy to understand that there is no organ of phonation,

  • The larynx is not made for speaking but rather to avoid cross swallowing,
  • The tongue for swallowing,
  • The jaw for mastication, the lips for seizing,
  • The lungs for breathing.

    We took systems of food ingestion and respiration and we learn to control this whole assemblage for the purpose of communication. It is a matter of secondary adaptation. It is the same for the ear.

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