Interdisciplinary Therapeutic Center of Thessaloniki - Lydia Papadimou - Speech Therapy - Occupational Therapy - Psychological Support

Sensory Room
Interdisciplinary Treatment Center Papadimos Lydia - Thessaloniki

What is the Sensory Room?

Space that helps in the sensory integration of children, teenagers and adults.
A sensory room is a special room designed to develop/cultivate a person's senses, usually through special lighting, music and objects. It is used for therapeutic purposes, for children with or without limited communication skills. It is worth noting that it adapts to the child's personal profile and enables personalized therapeutic intervention for each patient.
It is a safe space that aims to help users' sensory integration, allowing them to learn to regulate their brain's reactions to external stimuli by developing coping techniques. Accordingly, they stimulate or calm the senses – sight, touch and hearing – and provide space for people with social inclusion disorder, autism and other special educational needs to explore and develop their sensory skills. It is a place to relax, decompress & de-stress.
Many children struggle to focus and have sensory or emotional difficulties that prevent them from fully engaging in everyday life. The way we process tactile (touch), auditory, visual, gustatory, vestibular, proprioceptive, olfactory and motor stimuli is the process called sensory integration.
For most children sensory integration develops smoothly through play and free activities, but for children with sensory dysfunction/disorder, this process presents difficulties. For some, the brain may overreact to sensory stimuli, and for others, it may underreact. This inability to regulate responses to stimuli is known as sensory processing disorder (SPD). It can lead to bursts of behavior, such as repetitive movements, intense mobility, hand flapping, emotional disturbance, in some cases destruction of objects or the surrounding space, even with one's own body, known as stimming or self-stimulation.




	The sensory rooms target all eight senses. Most people are familiar with sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch – but there are 3 additional, lesser-known but equally important senses that may be under-functioning in some people: Proprioception – all our muscles and joints have tiny sensors that tell us where our body starts and ends in relation to our surroundings. Vestibular System – the inside of our ears is filled with small fluid-filled canals that move when we move our head. They contain receptors that send information about movement and balance to the brain. Interoception – The way our body knows what we feel inside, from the feeling of hunger, to the beating of our heart and the feeling of butterflies in our stomach. Depending on the sensory profile of the child, the special equipment & specialized activities help the users of these sensory rooms to improve their senses. Sensory integration stimulation play has been shown to have multiple benefits for people with autism & other developmental disorders, such as cognitive & motor skills development, improved focus & concentration, enhanced social skills and of course calmness and positive thinking. their mood.