After 1,200 frustrating clinic visits for her son’s dyslexia, Dolly Lowery had an idea. What if she could put therapy inside a video game?
“BrainyAct is therapy delivered via a video game experience,” Lowery says. “It retrains the brain.”
Lowery teamed up with chiropractic neurologist Nelson Mane to develop the program, then launched it commercially shortly before the pandemic. During the lockdowns, homebound families found themselves desperate for alternatives to in-person therapy. Between in-home setups (using the same Kinect technology as an Xbox) and treatment centers in Minnesota and Delaware, over 100 families have gone through the program.
Lowery says parents of children with autism, ADHD, or dyslexia often find the root cause of academic challenges lies deeper in the brain.
“These kids have meltdowns, they’re frustrated,” Lowery says. “Parents try tutoring to address life skills. But it’s developmental. Kids need to re-train basic motor skills first.”
For example, Lowery points to a recent participant who had serious difficulty reading. His parents had spent thousands of dollars in tutoring without much to show for it.
So, with a little help from an animated on-screen robot, the child went to work. Through rhythm games, “swatting bugs” on screen, and balancing on one foot while moving a ball along a track, he reinforced pathways in his brain.
Four months later, his reading skills had improved significantly.
“Higher skills like reading depend on motor skills,” Lowery says. “That’s where most kids with learning disabilities struggle. If a child misses crawling, they miss visual motor skills, bilateral integration, near vision, far vision. We go back and fill in those gaps.”
BrainyAct is now available at several private schools and community centers. Lowery says the program’s comparatively low price ($2970 for a four-month program) helps make it more accessible.
“Traditional therapy can be very expensive, especially for families with multiple kids,” Lowery says. “Plus, getting into a clinic can be a long wait.”
In spite of its video game appearance, BrainyAct does take work. Like any other exercise program, brain training requires concentrated effort over a few months. But COO Cindy Jorgensen says it’s a great way to make improvements without the traditional models of therapy.
“Kids are not going to get fixed in a couple sessions,” Jorgensen says. “But the people who completed the recommended program have had amazing results.”
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