God designed an awesome thing when he gave us our brain. Our approximately 3-pound organ is essentially the crown jewel of our body and does everything from initiating movement to controlling behavior and interpreting our senses.
We recently had the opportunity to use a
bone conduction headset by
Forbrain - Sound For Life LTD. I was so excited to try this out with my daughters who struggle with reading fluency and comprehension. Let me tell you a little bit more about this gem and how we have all been u
sing our voice to boost our brain!
SOUND FOR LIFE Ltd, is the company that produces this FORBRAIN. Their mission is to enhance individual’s cognitive abilities, i.e. attention, speech, memory, reading, comprehension, and language through regular practice. The state of the art device they created with the help of Aftershokz LLC, is portable and easy to use.
As I mentioned earlier, Forbrain is a bone conduction headset that works to stimulate your brain through the sound of your own voice. Have you heard your own voice lately? Like really heard how you sound. It is fascinating how this device transmits the vibrations from your voice to the bones just in front of your ears, resulting in bone conduction.
Wait, bone what?!
Essentially, sound waves are transmitted through the bones in our heads. The bones vibrate and the sound travels along the cochlea vestibule nerve in the inner ear, eardrum and middle ear. This vibration causes nerve impulses and connects the sounds that we hear to our brains.
Sometimes the natural process by which everyone hears sounds is interrupted causing problems with attention, concentration, working memory, and or short term memory. Using Forbrain for as little as 15-20 minutes a day for reading, speaking, or just general everyday talking you can stimulate your auditory reception and processing.
The Forbrain product is made up of a microphone, two bone conduction transduces, the parts that fit just in front of your ears, and the rectangular dynamic filter on the right hand side which controls the power and volume. The device is powered by a charge from a USB cord that is included. It comes packaged in a neat little black case with extra mouth piece covers for the microphone, the user manual, and quick start guide.
Using the Forbrain is as simple as placing the headphones around the back part of your head with the ear pieces sitting on the two bones in front of your outer ears. The device comes adjusted to the right volume out of the box, but I had to adjust the volume down for McKenzie and I since we apparently have sensitive ears. Just adjust the volume to your liking and position the microphone to a comfortable place near your mouth and you will begin to hear your voice.
Forbrain is recommended for daily use over a course of six to ten weeks for children through the elderly. Children 5 and below should use the product for roughly 10 minutes a day, while older children aged 5 through 15 are recommend to use the device for 15 minutes. Older teens, adults, and elderly should use the Forbrain daily for 10-30 minutes. The deivce should be used for a period of 10 weeks, then take a break and start the cycle again.
I used this product with my three youngest daughters, 13, 9, & 6. They each used the bone conduction headset for the allotted time for their ages. They each have a specific area I was trying to help them with from reading comprehension, memory, and attention span. They all eagerly wanted to try out our new toy, but first we had to let it charge up for a full 3 hours before the first use. Charging it was simple as I just plugged it into my desktop USB port. The light on the dynamic filter is red while it charges. Once the charging cycle is complete, the red light will turn off. A blue light will shine when the headset is on. I also went over instructions for its usage, because I must tell you this product is not cheap! It retails for $395 USD but if you have a child struggling, it is worth its weight in gold.
With Mikayla I have seen tremendous improvement in her reading comprehension and reading rhythm, especially. She used to read so fast without any pause and in such a monotone voice. Now that she has the headset on she can actually hear how she sounds and has made great strides in slowing down and reading. Her comprehension has skyrocketed too. She no longer reads a passage and cannot narrate back to me something she read. To help her get to this point I used the Echo and Accompanying technique, in which I overlaid my voice with hers. I would begin reading the passage and she would pick up {+/-} one second lag. It was hard tedious work, because she is a teenager and thinks she knows everything, but once she started seeing little results each day she was more eager to try and didn’t fuss too much.
For Montana and McKenzie I basically just wanted them to read aloud with the device on so they could hear their voices. Every day they would sit at the little desk next to my desk and read from their individual reading comprehension books or binders. I would follow along and correct them if they made a mistake. Other times for Montana, I would have her read her free reader out loud or a science book she was interested in reading aloud. Montana is my child who struggled to read because she could not hear the sounds the letters made. I wish we would have had this product a few years ago. She has made many strides as well in the last six weeks, as well as McKenzie. McKenzie is a petite girl, and the headset did not always fit right on her head. To solve this, I would tell her if she stopped hearing herself to tell me so that I could adjust the headset. It would be awesome if the Forbrain was adjustable for the kids with smaller features. However, this does not distract us from using the product at all.
When I first tried on the Forbrain it gave me a little start hearing my voice so clearly and actually hearing how I sound. It made me want to talk more and more and see what would happen if I changed pitch or made my voice loud or soft.
Overall, this is an awesome product and we will definitely keep using it daily in our homeschool. I have seen tremendous improvement in my three girls that I can wait until my son is just a bit older to use it with him for vocabulary development. Right now he is just a little too hands on and rough and I would hate for our bone conduction headset to get broken.
Be sure to check out what my CrewMates thought of this product by clicking the banner below.
Company ~ Forbrain - Sound For Life LTD.
Product ~ bone conduction headset
Price ~ $395 USD
Ages ~ early ages to Seniors
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