Complex adaptive systems are interconnected with their environments in dynamic ways. When a child is treated in a multi-sensory environment (MSE), a well-trained practitioner uses multisensory environment effects to promote neuronal connections by synchronizing energy exchanges in the brain. Increased synchrony unfreezes previously frozen degrees of freedom or neural interconnectivity for better sensory entrainment or sensory integration.

Sensory entrainment is a synchronization process that may occur between two previously asynchronous systems like vision and hearing. This synchronization process can support shifts into adaptive behavior complexity. Examples of adaptive behaviors that might increase in complexity due to this sensory entrainment process are ones that tend to increase in complexity for improving coordination. For example, a series of jumping jacks can be performed by children at a younger age than can a skiing-in-place pattern that requires asynchronous rather than synchronous bilateral movements.

The term multisensory integration is usually used to describe the more holistic effect this sensory entrainment process can promote. Multisensory integration means dynamic transitions into better synchrony between all the sensory systems. Examples of adaptive behaviors that might shift into greater complexity due to multisensory integration are ones that require mature laterality and quick directionality decisions. For example, degrees of freedom are unfrozen due to multisensory integration that support more mature handwriting. Multisensory integration can also lead to improved learning efficiencies that can be used to increase complexity of thought and behavior in general. 

Dynamic systems theory began educating the world on how this synchronization process occurs after analyzing the discovery of a Dutch physicist named Christiaan Huygens in 1893. Huygens discovered that the rhythm of two pendulum clocks would synchronize if they were sitting on the same table. That began a study of the power of dynamic system transitions to unfreeze previously frozen degrees of freedom for shifting into a more complex pattern in response to environmental inputs. 

Now scientist that study dynamic systems understand much more about that 1893 discovery of how a dynamic system transition can cause the rhythm of two pendulum clocks to synchronize when they are connected to a single environment like a table or a wall. We now understand that dynamic human system transitions follow the same universal pattern. We understand this now as the science that explains the behavior of all self-organizing complex adaptive systems. These are also called dynamic system transitions.

The Attunement Solutions Dynamics Approach to Treatment in an MSE is an application of the Dynamic Systems Approach to Occupational Therapy. It is used for shifting adaptive behavior toward greater complexity by unfreezing or unblocking human potential. The Dynamic Systems Approach to Occupational Therapy is an application of dynamic systems theory.

The Attunement Solutions Dynamics Approach to Treatment in an MSE is one way to use environment to increase opportunities for the synchronization process to occur. Examples include better isolation of eye gaze from head movement for increasing a child’s reading speed or better differentiation between two sides of a child’s body for improving bilateral coordination and laterality for better hand use. Dynamic Systems Theory also explains the value of educator assessments at the end of each school year to measure for greater adaptive behavior complexity or maturity in abilities to read, tell time, count numbers or money, and communicate with others. 

What does this mean for a therapist working with a client in an MSE? It means that, when a disengaged client hears music and perceives visual effects that change according to a similar rhythm, it produces a brightening effect. A brightening effect means they become more attentive to and can engage in a more motivated manner with their environment. Neural entrainment in the brain and better sensory system synchrony has the transformative power to reduce anxiety and relieve depression. 

Whether a client is depressed and disengaged or anxious and defensive, when their brain synchronizes the rhythm of music and visual effects through an adaptive response, body sensations can promote dynamic self and environmental awareness. Reengaged sensory perceptions can be used for reactivating environmental scanning capacities. That can lead to significant shifts in the adaptive behavior of people with advanced dementia for socialization and conversation. An analysis of this adaptive behavior shift into greater complexity was published and named the Attunement Solutions Dynamics Approach to Treatment in an MSE in 2017.