Shifting boundaries: from sensory integration dysfunction to digital medicine

• In Event: Neurosocieties: Interdisciplinary Explorations of the Brain, Culture and Ethics 2

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the evolvement of “sensory integration dysfunction” (SID) since the 1960s. The genealogy of SID illustrates how neuroscience reshapes the disciplinary boundary and introduces a new treatment paradigm embodied in the so-called “digital medicine” for ADHD and Alzheimer’s. SID was first proposed by occupational therapist Anna Jean Ayres in the 1960s as a theory and approach to treat children with learning disability and autism. About 90 percent of children with autism have sensory integration dysfunction. While occupational therapists have viewed SID as a key to understanding autism, psychiatrists have rarely grappled with autism from the perspective of SID. The recent rise of neuroscience changes how physicians appreciate SID, however. Neuroscience helps psychiatrists recognize SID’s central place in autism in DSM5. Owing to neuroscience, moreover, SID becomes a new model for pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments. While pharmaceutical companies encounter difficulties in developing conventional biochemical drugs for mental disorders, they resort to information technology and neuroscience to develop an action video game AKL-T01 (or Project EVO), which they claim to be a digital medicine to treat ADHD by activating certain neural networks to gain therapeutic effects. To develop AKL-T01, researchers rely on the SID database collected by occupational therapists. But ironically, occupational therapists are being replaced by this game in this new recognition of SID. It would be hard for Ayres to predict in her days that SID becomes a new treatment paradigm, and leads into a video game that shifts the boundary between entertainment and treatment.

Author

• Wen-Ching Sung, University of Toronto