0:00:05.4 Vickie Brett: Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vickie Brett.

0:00:09.2 Amanda Selogie: I'm Amanda Selogie.

0:00:10.6 VB: We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission, to change the conversation about education, civil rights, and modern activism. Each week we're gonna explore new topics, which are going to educate and empower others and give them a platform to enact change in education and level the playing field.

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0:00:33.4 VB: Welcome back, listeners. Hi, friends. We have a very exciting in-person for the first time in real life. Not the... Not four years, it's year.

0:00:43.9 AS: We've had a few. But we busted out our legit equipment for the first time in... Well, when I say dusted it off [laughter], I mean busted it off.

0:00:52.8 VB: We have a really special guest today. We are live in-person with Karen. Thank you so much for coming to our podcast. Can you give a little bit of background to our listeners of who you are and what you do?

0:01:05.4 Karen Odell-Barber: My name's Karen Odell-Barber. I'm the CEO of a company called Neurologics. We are a technology company that does brain mapping and optimization of the brain, producing permanent cognitive repair. And what that means is 15 functional IQ points for every person who does optimization regardless of age and a wild improvement in memory. I am a Neurologics client. I say that all the time. I am a person with traumatic brain injury who also has a severe learning disability that was diagnosed the last semester of grad school. So we just told that story. And if you wanna hear that one too, visit the Neurologics. It's a 14-year-old company and like you guys, I'm passionate about brain health and passionate about helping people make their lives work better.

0:01:53.0 VB: Absolutely. And we've had guests on talking about...

0:01:55.9 AS: Yeah, we've talked about brain...

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0:02:01.3 AS: And somewhat kind of like brain mapping, but talking just about how the brain is plastic and how we can work our brain to our benefit. But I wanna kind of go to... We often get kids going through lots and lots of testing and some of the testing is the cognitive testing, looking at IQ, cognitive abilities. And that's often where like we start with assessments and helping figure out how we identify and provide services to kids. And that's usually like the ceiling. Where we think that they can get to. But science has showed us that that's not necessarily the peak. That we can move that ceiling up higher. So can you talk a little bit about that and the science behind it?

0:02:38.9 KO: Yeah, sure. Our technology was developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory. It is, again, not a new technology, it's FDA registered, it incorporates Psychometric Testing measures. So paper instrument testing like you guys do, is incorporated into Brain Mapping. And it's a two hour process. It looks at the brain at the speed of thought. And unlike other Brain Maps or other testing mechanisms that look at the structure of the brain, this looks at how the brain functions and it looks how the brain functions in a perfect learning environment, which is what we all know, ability to learn is generally in a quiet environment that's temperature controlled with no ambient noise, and then it introduces real life stressors. There is an algorithm that puts the brain through its paces, puts the brain through its paces under task and under stress, and then it compares those numbers. And so if you look at, your top line IQ that is, in a perfect learning environment, how are you able to learn? And then you look at when you are stressed and when people say, well, what does stress mean? And for an adult, I would say it means in California you're driving down I-405.

0:03:44.2 VB: Right. Yep.

0:03:44.9 KO: And you got a rescue dog that just barfed on your front seat. You got a kid in the backseat who may have soiled their diaper and you're running behind because there's an accident and you're 15 minutes late for your next appointment. That's what real life stress is. So what does that big brain or top line IQ do when you're under stress? This technology looks at where is the portion of the brain that lights up under stress and takes over. And it looks at... It started out being 293 domains of the brain, that increased to 313. And then with AI it's now, 12,000 domains of the brain. It's like breaking the genome code of how does the brain function and work.

0:04:26.6 VB: Well, just even us trying to even understand the brain in the last 30 years. And just because of our podcast, us being able to like even know what the brain being plastic means. And we were just so blown away the first time that we had met you because of your personal story. But I wanted to touch on something before we get into your personal story, 'cause I think it'd be really helpful for a lot of our listeners who are administrators or people that are just well, I'm just... I work for a school district. Why does this matter? You had mentioned the 15 points of the functional IQ, like what are those?

0:05:02.4 KO: Yeah. What does it mean to have...

0:05:04.7 VB: What does it, what does that mean?

0:05:06.2 KO: I mean, for the people who are educators or scientists, they would say, that's one and a half standard deviations. Right? And for the rest of us, everything's known 200. So for the rest of us who are not scientists or who go well, what does one and a half standard deviations mean in a practical way? 15 functional IQ points is the difference between the government standard for cognitive impairment and normal. So 85 to 100 is 15 points. Normal IQ of 100 is not a college-ish IQ. So meaning like if you have an IQ of 100, you are junior college bound typically, you can be trained in a vocational way, but likely the data shows us you'll struggle in college without a lot of support. The difference between 101 and 115, that is a solidly college IQ that's fringing on graduate school. Normal IQ. And the difference between 115 and 130 is the difference between solid college IQ and grad school, med school picket, the sky, the... Always.

0:06:13.5 KO: So what does 15 functional IQ points mean? It's a life changer. It is a total game changer in terms of what your genetic potential is. And the idea of... I didn't even know what that meant before. Genetic potential. Parents would say like, I get it. I get that you can do optimization and that you can get my kid to normal in all of these sectors. Executive function, resilience, IQ, short-term working memory, long-term, working memory, auditory processing. Awesome. That you can get all of that to normal. How long does it take to get them to gifted? And in the beginning, 14 years ago, I go, "God, I don't know". And so I called the technology developer and said, "Is it possible to take someone to gifted?" And the answer was, if they have the genetic potential to be gifted, we can take them to gifted.

0:07:02.3 VB: Oh, interesting.

0:07:03.4 KO: Right?

0:07:03.5 VB: Okay. Right.

0:07:04.5 KO: So I always...

0:07:05.4 VB: This is not like this cure all kind of... You have to have it in your DNA.

0:07:09.1 KO: Well, I'm saying 15 points is possible no matter what.

0:07:11.8 VB: Oh, interesting. Yeah.

0:07:13.9 KO: But giftedness, and so that means like, well, where are you? Are you already on the gifted side? Because we've certainly run into that too. We run into people who are incredibly gifted and completely deficient in executive function. So it's like they've thought a genius IQ and they can't find their way to a gate. And they don't know where their keys are. And so that is something that happens as well. But the idea of like, okay, here's this person who's gifted, but that person's wife is incredibly frustrated. She let me know, that he loses his keys, he leaves laptops in rental cars. I mean, so that piece is... It's certainly possible to have challenges and be gifted.

0:07:54.1 AS: Yeah. Which is we see all this time in the school setting where we know the kid is really bright and maybe they shine in one subject or another way. It happens to be maybe a preference or really a strain. But then these other areas, these other classes, they're really struggling and the family is just... In odds trying to figure out like, how do we support this child? The school thinks, well, if you can do it in this area, you should be able to do it in this area. So it's just a matter of you choosing not to, choosing not to do your homework. You're choosing not to perform in class or perform on tests when in reality, we know that there's a lot more going on, especially with our like middle and high school students. And we often think of, okay, well, we need a lot of support to help teach Executive Functioning skills and we need a lot of accommodations. And those are great and those are really helpful, but it's not necessarily the only thing we can do.

0:08:40.0 KO: Right. So I talk about brain function, like building a house and I say like, the brain is the concrete, it's the foundation. And if your brain function is solid, all the things you're talking about, I love executive function programs that are taught. But if you're putting... Those are the frame. And if you're putting a roof onto uprights and there is no concrete, what happens? It wobbles all over the place. So I also say like, you can't live on concrete. So we are one portion of the solution. We are not the only solution, but we're absolutely foundational when it comes to, hey, if a kid struggles or learns differently, and I'm that kid, you guys know that, we are the first line of defense in terms of like, okay, if we can give you 15 functional IQ points, it means then that the school can teach you new things. It means that that kid shows up differently from one school year to the next school year in terms of their capability. And it also means that parents need to get up to speed with, I know you used to have to do all these things for your kid, you don't need to do that anymore. That kid can do that for themself...

0:09:44.4 AS: They can do it, but they still need to be taught how to do it. You're kind of giving them the access to it...

0:09:50.4 KO: Thats right.

0:09:51.3 AS: And to learning the skills where they didn't have the access before, but then they still need to do the work.

0:09:56.4 VB: Right. Right. So if you think about... My Post-Master's work is an addiction. So the idea of like, okay, an addiction case and we blame and point fingers and say like, this person chronically relapses. And it's like you look at their brain map and you go, well yeah. Like look what happens here. Like their relapse indicators are off the chain and they have, an overactive cingulate, which is where OCD lives. And we are expecting them to be able to look for signs and symptoms of relapse exercise, provide their own structure, go to a meeting, find a sponsor. And these are kids that... And I'm using kid up to age 30. But these are kids that they react quickly. And if you think about the way that the cingulate and the brain works, which is where all addiction lives, process addictions, addiction to screens, pathologic use of gaming. I mean, use of pornography, all of those things live in the same part of the brain. And if you think like in that part of the brain, it's a locked cingulate is an O open cingulate is a U and the idea of like, go outside and take a toolbox bring it back in here and if your cingulate is locked, you're like, I want to use, I'm going to use, where can I get drugs to use? I'm going to use. They're not open to being able to make those outside decisions. And so it's a question of how is it that a child can utilize a higher functioning brain to make different strides academically than exist before?

0:11:27.1 VB: Right. And still have learning differences.

0:11:30.4 KO: And still have learning differences. Right.

0:11:32.2 VB: Yeah.

0:11:32.8 KO: Right.

0:11:33.0 VB: That's, yeah. That's Bethany. I know for us, when we're looking at IQ testing and we're listening to school psychologists kind of explain the Bell Curve and all that and saying, "Oh, okay. Your child has an IQ of 70." We more often than not, are seeing that child be categorized as ID, intellectual disability.

0:11:55.4 KO: Disability.

0:11:56.3 VB: We've also had to explain to us that, if you have an IQ of 50, you're not gonna be able to, like, language is very difficult. What would you say... If a parent is listening to this and their child has an IQ of that, 70 for instance, would this be something that you could help with?

0:12:18.0 KO: Absolutely. The difference between 70 and 85 is profound. So the difference of like somebody who's 85 can have vocational training sometimes, can go to structured volunteer work, some can live independently. Whereas somebody who's got an IQ of 70, you're kind of training the parent to expect lifetime care.

0:12:39.0 VB: That's exactly right. That's where I was going with that because we have always talked about labels and that label should be for clothes, but as individuals that work in a field where label is everything...

0:12:51.9 KO: Sure.

0:12:53.0 VB: It can cut both ways. It could actually be very beneficial because we can get the services, we can get everything, early intervention. But then, the other side of it is... This is what we're telling you, and you're gonna start to believe that about you.

0:13:06.0 AS: Well, and everybody else that encounters exactly that child works, that child see that label and thinks, well, this is the plateau where we can reach, we're not even gonna consider anything up here because there's no way we could possibly get up here, so we're not even gonna consider it. And the biggest part of that is academics. Once we get to middle school, high school, we think they're never gonna get there. So why even bother? We're immediately transitioning them to vocational classes and we're not considering that there might be areas where they could have strengths or we could get them there.

0:13:33.5 KO: Yeah. And I'm saying in real life, I've seen examples of kids, especially adopted kids who make bigger jumps than 15 points. And the idea behind that is that kids who are adopted have learning differences and challenges that are not like neurotypical children that are sensorial that come from birth. And so the idea of auditory processing difference in adopted kids is something we're going to do a peer reviewed study on very soon. In two verticals. But when I say we can reliably deliver 15 points, we've delivered up to 40.

0:14:07.3 VB: Wow.

0:14:07.4 KO: So meaning I always under promise and over deliver. Being like, that's kid at 70, we can get them to 85. Who knows? Like if, what else is going on? And it depends on what are the other factors. But I've seen kids make a 40 point jump. I've seen kids where they were a foreign adoption. They'd been in an orphanage for a long period of time. Had early life challenges. And then they figure out like, oh, now I'm cooking with gas. And they've gone on to go to junior college with an IQ that started out at 70. So, I mean, that's not out of the question.

0:14:42.2 AS: So something really good for families to consider when their kids are young. I mean, we get... A lot of times with kids who have Down Syndrome. We get their parents asking us questions of, will my child ever be able to be in general education? I have one little girl I've worked with since she was in preschool and she's now about to transition to middle school. And she's been in general education. 'Cause We fought hard and we worked really hard, but the family has always asked me, like every single year they ask me, "How long can we keep this up? How long can we keep this up?" And in my view, I think she can go on to college because she's shown the potential. But there's always often those families that early on with diagnosis, they think, okay, well, is this the limit? And if they're told, like, look, if we early on... I mean this, this can be part of early intervention. That's something that we can be considering as we don't have to be stuck here, even though everything is telling us that this is how kids with Down Syndrome have always been, or even like Cerebral Palsy or whatever the diagnosis is early on. This is an avenue that we could be considering and like seeing a different vision for a kid.

0:15:46.6 KO: We had to get a kid in kindergarten. We'd love to get what's the ideal age. We love to get them in kindergarten. And that's because that's before first pruning, which happens between ages 6 and 7. So as you sort of go forward in the pruning process, what can be done with somebody who has severe autism and they're 19, that's less than what could be done if we got them when they were 6.

0:16:08.1 VB: Can you explain pruning?

0:16:09.7 KO: Pruning? Yeah, sure, so it's like pruning a rosebush. And so the idea is that early in life when the brain grows into the skull it self-selects. It is a self-selecting organ. And it looks at, okay, what are the strong neural pathways that look like they're robust? And what are the ones that are weak or disconnected? We're going... We, the brain, are going to clip off the ones that are weak or disconnected. And that is why if a child doesn't have language by the age of 6, it's unlikely that they'll get it. Because those neural pathways needed have been clipped because they're immature and then a wall comes down. So pruning, if you think about it, it's like pruning the brain into concrete rooms that don't speak to each other. So the idea of early intervention is absolutely correct. But it's also like not just early intervention, but it's also opening up of new neural connections. And if you look at neurons firing in a Petri dish, it's a fascinating thing to check out on YouTube.

0:17:06.2 KO: You look at them and they almost look like polarizing magnets where they cut briefly. And then you look at them when they touch with regularity and they fuse. And that is what Neurologics does over a four month period minimum. And with a kid with severe autism, it's much longer. We like to get a kid who is verbal. So if we have a kid who is verbal, that is where we can promise 15 functional IQ points across the board. And again, sometimes it's an inverse relationship. Sometimes it's the greater the movement, the lower the function to begin, which is a profound thing to watch. The next phase of pruning happens... First is between ages 6 and 7. The next one is around seventh or eighth grade. And that is why I am so passionate about, please don't have your kid bang their head and Pup Warner football before eighth grade. Have them not put pads and helmets on until that summer between eighth and ninth grade when they are 14 years old. After that, there is a third phase of pruning that happens in late adolescents. And so that happens between ages 19 and 25. And believe it or not, we consider as adolescents up to age 25. So the adage of like, your brain's not fully formed until you're 25.

0:18:16.2 VB: Right. Yeah, I've heard that.

0:18:18.6 KO: So people go, "oh, you don't develop your personality." It's not personality, it's pruning.

0:18:21.8 VB: Yeah. I would say that, so my daughter had her personality when she came out.

0:18:25.3 KO: Yeah, it's pruning, three phases. So it's the same thing when you talk about drug and alcohol use. And it's in the literature all over the place. It looks at like early introduction to drugs and alcohol is neurotoxic, and then early introduction is just defined as prior to age 25. And if you are introduced in second pruning, it's even more brutal. So it's like those kids who use with regularity in middle school, it's much more severe. And that's why...

0:18:52.2 VB: And I think we've known now we're able to, put the... Yeah. Put that like, oh, this is, particularly, but people have always said that. Well, right. I mean, and when we look at like, assessments of kids, especially young kids, like we have at IEP meetings, like assessors will say like, these IQ scores, like they're never gonna change. But the only exception to that we often find is when the kid is assessed, like really early, 3 years old, two and a half, and they're nonverbal, and/or there's a lot of behaviors or there's something that's going on that is impacting the assessment. Then like in three years we assess we might see a difference because there was something involved. But usually parents are told, this is your IQ score, this is your... They're not gonna change.

0:19:34.8 KO: That's what you believe.

0:19:36.4 VB: Right.

0:19:36.6 KO: The same thinking like when my grandmother had a stroke and I was a kid, it was like, "Oh, your grandma had a stroke. She's gonna have palsy on the side of her face." And now we know, in this age of the brain, 'cause that's where we are. In this age of the brain, it's like, oh, your grandma had a stroke. We gotta get OT in there. Like the very first day she opens her eyes, we gotta get her up, we gotta get her walk. It's about using the brain as the workaround over the brain damage. So if you think about like, damage to the brain from a blow to the head or even surgical damage to the head it's a Black Hole.

0:20:08.4 KO: And if you think about energy doesn't cross the Black Hole again, what we do is open new neural pathways around the outside of the Black Hole. And we look at the brain through the lens of neural electric activity. So if you think about like a net of holiday lights that you throw over your bushes. It's a net. That net covers the gray matter of your brain and and that's called the connectome. And what we do is influence the connectome, which if you think about the brain, all of it is neural electric activity. Yes, there's blood and yes, there's tissue, but we've looked at the brain for far too long through the lens of tissue and blood. We are looking at it through neural electric activity, which is what happens when the brain thinks.

0:20:50.7 VB: Yeah. I know. It's fascinating. It's way above my pay grade. [laughter]

0:20:55.1 AS: So yeah, it's definitely something that we would love to see schools really embrace more of the science, because I think we're still back in the '70s when education laws were backwards.

0:21:05.1 VB: Well, it's so on. Because in one aspect, they say, we can't diagnose autism. We can't diagnose dyslexia. And this is all true. But then when they want to use the science or the data, and they are crossing the line of medical, it's like all of a sudden they're using it. So...

0:21:24.8 AS: Yeah. They can't diagnose. They're not doctors X, Y, and Z. But then there's this hurdle of getting schools to use science and technology that has come about that may be foreign to them and to be accepting of it. And we're not...

0:21:41.2 KO: And it's the same for doctors. I'm married to one of those. And the chair of our Scientific Advisory Board said, look, the second year graduate med school, the information's out of date by 20 years. And the idea is like first do no harm. So the idea is like, is it peer reviewed? We are peer reviewed in two verticals. School districts would probably love to know that for traumatic brain injury we're peer reviewed in the peer reviewed literature. So for someone who has documented traumatic brain injury, we are an FDA registered to answer for that. And I guess the question is also asked, 'cause I go to IEPs back in the day when those were happening in-person, I don't go to them... I send people to you and other amazing educational attorneys.

0:22:28.7 KO: But the idea of what is... So what? You do this process, what is that gonna produce? What is observable? The idea of neuroplasticity, as you said, we're just kind of gleaning that that's a possibility. And when somebody has delivered 15 functional IQ points, they show up differently.

0:22:47.8 VB: They have to. They have to.

0:22:49.6 KO: Yeah. So the idea is especially for kids who go away to a residential program, therapeutic boarding school or one-on-one school and then they reintegrate into public school. The idea is like, what have you done and where's the kid that left? 'Cause this isn't the same kid. And I'm talking about even in terms of self-image, where real life case, 15-year-old girl wouldn't get out of bed for six months, CPS case. Like school calls CPS, the parents finally do something because CPS is called, the girl goes off to therapeutic program and the girl shows up first day of school early, first one there, and says, I'm academic, I'm a scholar. Like, the idea of... That whole idea of herself completely shifted and the idea of... Before you had divorced parents where one parent thought like, "Hey, this is a case where she has a... She doesn't have a full scale IQ, hey she's gonna live with me forever."

0:23:44.9 KO: The other one thought, "No, no, she's gifted, she's gotta be at four year college, at an elite college." And it seemed like somewhere in the middle was what was real. But I have to be honest, like somewhere in the middle a year and a half ago was not where that kid is now. So now it's like I look at that person's follow on brain map. She's had three and that's what everybody who does Neurologics programming has a minimum of three. I looked at brain map number three and went like, this is a solid college IQ. Like before, I was the one saying, yeah, maybe structured junior college, can't we come together on a plan that makes more sense that isn't grandiose but is also not dependent. Let's look at a plan that makes some sense. It's a completely different paradigm. And for that person to see herself as a scholar who is like, "I'm going to college and this is the thing... And PS, I want a job now." That's a completely different, I'd like a part-time job. 'Cause I can show you that I can manage my academics and hard time job. That's what this delivers.

0:24:45.7 VB: Oh my gosh. Karen, thank you so much for coming onto our podcast, allowing us to use your beautiful office space. If people wanted to reach out or give more information, where could they go?

0:24:56.2 KO: Yeah, neurologics.com. We also have a podcast.

0:25:00.1 VB: I was just gonna say please tell everybody your Podcast. Yeah.

[laughter]

0:25:02.3 KO: And that's on YouTube. But neurologics.com is a great site to start and sort of click on the resources that are there. We've referenced peer reviewed medical journal articles. They're there as well.

0:25:12.0 VB: And I love the basis for your podcast as well. Because it it's related to sports and we were talking about traumatic brain injuries and in the last couple of years, we just, a month or so ago, a very popular... I would say Taylor Swift's boyfriend's brother [laughter] just retired. And this was something that was... I know he is not feelings don't Phil got his own Podcast. Philly's not the villages, Philadelphia Eagles calm down everybody. And, it's real, the brain damage that a lot of these athletes pursue and for him to make a stand and wanna spend time with his family, I thought would really, really great. And so it'd be fascinating to check out Karen's Podcast so you can kind of learn about the science behind what is happening with the... And how students even early as kindergarten can really get more support than we even considered before and for families to consider. And I think it's great. So we loved having you on, and I'm sure we'll have to have you back 'cause there's so much we could talk about about the brain.

0:26:17.2 KO: I know.

0:26:17.8 AS: And topics that just kind of encompass education. So.

0:26:21.3 KO: Absolutely.

0:26:22.2 VB: For our listeners, we hope you enjoy.

0:26:24.0 AS: We'll talk to you next week.

0:26:25.3 VB: Bye.

0:26:25.5 AS: Bye.