FAQ for Therapists

PATH neurotraining only works if you are using a Google Chrome Browser.

1. If my patient has trouble reading quickly or trouble paying attention, will PATH brain-training help my patient?
Studies on PATH to Reading found (see publications in leading scientific journals) that with only 15 minutes of PATH training 2-3 times a week for 12 weeks, reading speed improved as much as 11-fold and attention span and memory retention improved up to 7 grade levels, by speeding up the visual timing in the brain, as proven by thousands of the program’s users, and published in leading scientific journals.

2. How do you motivate the patient to do the brain-training as directed?
– Each time the patient sees the direction of movement when moving stripes are very dim, then patient earns a fish in a net, and a high score, as shown at the end of each pattern.
– The therapist provides feedback, and builds engagement with their patient, celebrating the improvements together, by providing a sticker for each level of complexity completed.
– Make sure screen brightness is 100%.
– Make sure arrow key is not pushed, until screen is blank.
– If direction fish stripes move are so dim cannot be seen, then push the same arrow key (each time incorrect, stripes get darker) until movement of stripes can be seen again.
– If not sure of the fish stripes movement, and fish stripes are clearly visible, then push the space bar to see a new pattern.
– When discriminating left-right movement for widest fish stripes, if nose of fish gets lighter, stripes moved left, and if fish nose gets darker, stripes moved right.
– Make sure do not stare in one spot, blinking eyes frequently, and keep entire fish pattern in field of view, so also see background stripes.
– If person is getting it wrong several times, and the stripes are dark, then press the ‘x’ key to restart this contrast threshold measurement, and then give them more feedback to encourage them to see it more dimly.
– When doing MotionMemory program, and doing Adult program ask: Did the fish stripes move in one or two directions? If in one direction, then push the up (right-right) or down (left-left) arrow keys. Otherwise you push the arrow of the direction they moved first.
– Since some children have great difficulty doing motion memory, we have created a new version: Child Motion Memory that instead of pushing one key, like in the motion memory training movie, you press two keys in a row using only the left and right arrow keys to signal the direction of the first and second pattern in that order. Therefore, no sticker is needed to guide the person doing the motion memory program. The adult motion memory uses one key to signal the direction of movement, whereas the child motion memory uses two keys in a row and will not progress until two keys have been pushed.
– If MotionMemory program is still too difficult, then return to the Motion program and change the complexity level by pressing the ‘c’ key when in the Motion program to begin it again at complexity level 1. If too slow, then increase complexity level to a higher level, increasing in increments of 4 to get a faster speed of left-right movement.
– If patient’s vision blurs, then should have patient blink eyes more often (which resets the brain’s gain) and not stare in one spot.
– You should follow each session of the PATH to Reading program (both Motion and Motion Memory) by at least one reading rate threshold by clicking on Reading Rate under Motion. Therapists should read the words with their student to help them with pronunciation. Please watch video on dashboard for Reading Rate first. Then you should choose a story that is at the person’s reading grade level. The six words of text will be presented slowly until they are presented so quickly that all six words cannot be read correctly. Remember to wait until the 6 words disappear before pushing the right (correct) or left (incorrect) arrows. A staircase method determines the reading rate threshold in words per minute. A graph is displayed at the end of the reading rate threshold showing the speed of different 6 words of text and whether the observer was correct (1) or incorrect (0) at that speed. The ‘x’ in the upper right corner of the graph must be clicked to close graph. The Data under Motion (at very bottom of Data page) will then keep track of this reading speed, date, time, and story read. By clicking on the number of words/min you can see this graph again.

– If do Motion program a second time, provides more motivation to learn MotionMemory, improving function of brain pathways so increase timing even more. Motion program alone benefits focusing attention and working memory. MotionMemory is to be used when want more challenging task than Motion.
– If want to see how patient is doing on PATH training when doing program, either 1) share their screen using zoom or another screen sharing app, OR 2) sign into therapist login, click on patients name, and view data as patient does program. Do NOT access patient data when patient is doing program on a different computer unless logging into therapist webapp on a second computer.

3. What does the PATH Therapy improve?
PATH is a computer program that uses visual stimulation to improve the brain’s timing so that both visual and auditory impairments are reduced. PATH helps people with Dyslexia, ADD/ADHD, slow processing speeds, Amblyopia, Autism, Speech and Language, and Concussions (traumatic brain injuries). PATH was found to improve figure/ground discrimination, reading speed, comprehension, pronunciation, writing, focusing attention, sequential processing, processing speed, problem solving, multitasking, and visual and auditory working memory.
– PATH neurotraining improves the function of brain pathways, that is, the visual, attention, and executive control pathways, by using patterns that optimally activate motion cells (left-right movement) relative to the pattern cells (stationary background). Therefore, these improvements are rapid and are sustained over time.

4. How much improvement should the patient experience in reading comprehension and other cognitive skills that include focusing attention and working memory retention?
Previous studies found that the patient should see improvements from one to seven grade levels. There is a free reading rate program included with the purchase of PATH and if PATH Brain-Training is used, reading aloud with patient, or using other reading speed programs, after three months of PATH Brain-Training the patient can experience up to 11-fold faster reading speeds.

5. When should we see start to see improvements?
Sometimes you will notice improvements right away. Usually by the 12th session, significant improvements will be noticed in the patient’s ease of reading and understanding what is read. What improvements are seen is based on what is practiced after completing the PATH brain-training and how often PATH training is completed. Reading only improves if practice on reading out loud follows the PATH training.

6. How long is a normal brain-training session? Only 15 minutes!
It is recommended to do two sessions per sitting and each session takes between 3 to 10 minutes. It should be followed by at least 15 minutes of reading, 30 minutes is recommended. If another therapy or educational activity is being done following the PATH session that can be counted as the 15 minutes of reading.

7. How much supervision is needed?
This depends on how much attention is focused on the task. For some patients, an adult is needed to provide constant supervision and motivation, whereas for others, having someone in the same room might be sufficient. Feedback should be provided after every pattern showing the patient you are paying attention, and providing feedback about how well patient completed the last pattern. The patient can do this on their own, but must be motivated enough to do so.

8. Is the patient required to come into therapist’s office each time, or is this program something the patient can complete on own at home?
PATH brain-training is recommended to be done initially in the office to train the patient, then it can be done in office, at home, or a combination of office and home visits. Now with the web-app, the therapist can see all of their patients data, and the patient can do PATH in your office or at home.

9. How do I see my patient’s data?
Once you have activated your therapy office, You click on your patient’s name which brings up the summary data for both Motion and MotionMemory separately. On the dashboard for each patient, you can also see their data by clicking on: Performance (under Complexity Level) to see graphs of each test frequency contrast sensitivity (=1/contrast threshold*100), and Data (following word Performance) to see the contrast threshold (CT1, CT2, CT3, … CT20) and standard deviation shown in brackets (SD1, SD2, SD3 … SD20) for each of the 20 patterns, in the same order used to train on each pattern, showing the duration (dur) needed to see the five patterns for each test frequency (0.5, 1, 2, and 0.25 cyc/deg, shown in that order) for each complexity level (far right side of each row). If you look down each CT column, you can see how their thresholds for the same spatial frequency combination get lower, even as the complexity level, and thus the difficulty increases, by slowly increasing the contrast of the background grating from 5% up to 20% contrast, and the motion of the center stripes (each 4 complexity levels) from 5 Hz (theta movement) up to 13 Hz (alpha movement).

To see graphs of individual data, click on the contrast threshold value, see figure above, which shows person’s response on each trial (1=correct and 0=incorrect response), as well as mean, standard deviation, score, number of times this measurement process was repeated to measure threshold, and time of day threshold was finished. On the right side of the figure, you see a sample of therapists currently registered to use PATH neurotraining with their patients. Underneath this table is a sample of what each therapist sees when they log into their therapist account: a listing of each patient. When they click on their patient’s name, they see the dashboard, performance and data of each patient listed, as shown on the left side of this figure for one patient.

10. What is a good regimen to use following PATH training?
Follow PATH neurotraining with your vision and cognitive therapy regimen to see improvements in these skills rapidly, enabling your patient to understand and follow instructions more easily.

11. What if this doesn’t work for my patient?
– You must follow PATH neurotraining with vision and cognitive therapy to see improvements in these skills.
– You have a one-week free trial to make sure it works for you before purchasing PATH Brain-Training,
– You have a money-back guarantee if PATH Brain-Training is used as directed.

12. What if I can’t afford PATH neurotraining? Please contact PDI to discuss payment plans.

13. How does PATH brain-training differ from all other therapies that are available?
PATH brain-training requires a paradigm shift in treatment from phonologically-based methods to visually-based methods (Lawton, 2016; Lawton & Shelley-Tremblay, 2017; Lawton, 2019).

14. How does PATH brain-training differ from Raz-Kids (computer-based guided reading) ?
Raz-Kids uses repeated reading, not designed to improve the speed of brain processing. PATH neurotraining was found to be much more effective than repeated reading (Lawton & Shelley-Tremblay, 2017; Lawton, 2019) in improving reading fluency, attention, and memory.

15. How does PATH brain-training differ from FastForWord ?
PATH neurotraining which improves visual timing was found to be much more effective than FastForWord which improves phonological timing (how words sound), in reading speed, comprehension, attention, and both visual and auditory working memory (Lawton, 2016; Lawton, 2019).

16. How does PATH brain-training differ from Accelerated Reader ?
Accelerated Reader is a reading list, while PATH to Reading is program that fixes the timing in the brain, enabling reading, attention, and memory to be easier and faster.

17. Can a patient go directly to the pathtoreading.com website to order the Path program for $1195. If so, why would a doctor prescribe it and charge more for their time?
Yes, a patient can go to the website and order PATH training. But they must pay $200/hour to be trained by our staff to do the program and analyze their results. These are fees you would charge each patient, who you as a therapist now have access to all of their data. The tools provided to the therapist by the web-app have increased significantly by being able to monitor each patient’s progress on PATH training. Moreover, PATH training by itself is not sufficient to improve reading, attention, and memory, all high level cognitive skills. The normal tools of vision and cognitive therapy must follow the PATH training after every 2 sessions (1 training cycle) for these cognitive skills to improve significantly. Furthermore, PATH training improves the patient’s ability to complete the vision and cognitive therapy you want them to complete much more easily. So you would be charging for an hour of vision/cognitive therapy that will be streamlined, since now your patients magnocellular and parvocellular pathways will be working together so multitasking can be done easily.

18. What if I can’t see the bottom of the background pattern and the bottom of the graphs?
This means the google browser’s zoom is set to 110% instead of 100%. Change by clicking in the upper right corner of the browser window (on three vertical dots if Mac user or Up arrow if Windows user), and changing the zoom to 100% or 10% less than its current zoom setting. This can also be caused by setting the screen resolution to a lower resolution.

View Publications to see details of these studies that were conducted over the past 20 years.

Call Perception Dynamics at (310) 903-6009 OR Email: info@pathtoreading.com