Exploring the Science of Brain Stim Audio

The Strong Institute was founded in 1994 as the REI Institute by Jeff Strong and Beth Kaplan after more than a decade of Jeff’s initial research into the traditional uses and techniques of musical therapeutic rhythm around the world, spanning traditions from Africa to North America, South America to Europe.

Jeff determined he needed to examine the core mechanisms of rhythmic stimulus techniques in a controlled setting. His goal was to better understand the mechanisms involved in using rhythm to stimulate and synchronize the nervous system.

Our first study, entitled “Rhythmic Entrainment Intervention as Applied to Childhood Autism: A Pilot Study” was conducted in a public school setting in the suburbs of St. Paul, MN in the spring of 1994. Sixteen elementary-age children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder participated in this study. The results were encouraging and resulted in the presentation of this paper at several professional healthcare conferences throughout North America.

This study and the professional community’s enthusiastic response to it led to numerous other research projects with individuals with neurological disorders including individuals with autism, attention deficit disorder, Tourette’s Syndrome, chronic pain, learning disabilities, and central auditory processing disorder.

Research on Rhythmic Entrainment Intervention has been conducted by numerous other institutions including the University of Kansas Medical Center, Oregon Health Sciences University, and the Center for the Study of Autism, to name a few. To date, these studies have resulted in papers that have been presented at over one hundred professional healthcare conferences.

From this research, we discovered ways to use specific rhythms and techniques to facilitate improvements in many of the symptoms associated with a variety of neurological disorders such as autism, attention deficit disorder, anxiety disorders, and more. We are the first organization to define the clinical application of auditory rhythm to stimulate and synchronize the brain.

Since the creation of Rhythmic Entrainment Intervention, we have worked with hundreds of thousands of people throughout the world and have built a large provider network of over 1,000 healthcare professionals who offer REI to their patients. This has provided us with an extensive database of clinical experience and research that has allowed us to continually improve the quality of our REI Custom Program™.