Sensory-Space

30/11/2025

So clever, recycle peeps we’ve got enough stuff we just need to get creative about how we use it!! 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1EdMrm3pRK/?mibextid=wwXIfr

28/11/2025

You can find all these guys in our Sensory-Space Kelp Forrest Maze 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

27/11/2025

Hi all sadly the City of Johannesburg and the Gauteng Department of Health are ignoring our pleas!! If you’d like to contribute towards saving the CMI and keeping the lights on, please consider donating to our cause 💜

The Children's Memorial Institute is a community of NGOs based in the heart of Johannesburg. Sadly we find ourselves stuck in the middle of a fee dis...

23/11/2025

Amazing, urchins don’t have a brain they are a brain!! 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

MAJOR DISCOVERY: Sea urchins don’t have a brain—they are a brain

Sea urchins may not have a brain, but they are one. New research has revealed that juvenile sea urchins possess a highly sophisticated nervous system that spans their entire body.

Unlike the familiar centralized brains of vertebrates or the diffuse nerve nets of simpler creatures, sea urchins boast a fully integrated “all-body brain.”

Using single-nucleus genetic profiling, scientists discovered that over half of the cell clusters in young adult sea urchins were active neurons—expressing key neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, GABA, and more.

What’s even more remarkable is how this neural system forms. During metamorphosis, sea urchins transition from bilateral larvae into radially symmetrical adults. As their body plan reorganizes, so does their nervous system—forming a distributed yet coordinated network that enables perception, behavior, and control across their entire body.

This discovery overturns long-held assumptions about how nervous systems evolve and suggests that intelligence doesn’t require a central brain. Instead, nature may have engineered multiple paths to complex neural architectures—and sea urchins just revealed one of the strangest and most elegant.

Source: "Single-nucleus profiling highlights the all-brain echinoderm nervous system." Science Advances, 2025.

21/11/2025

Awesome opening of the Sensory-Space Studio Victoria Yards yesterday 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

21/11/2025

We had an awesome launch of our Sensory-Space Studio at Victoria Yards yesterday. Lots more pics and info to follow but in the meantime enjoy the sweet musical stylings of the band 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

20/11/2025

Hi all the Sensory-Space at the CMI and at Victoria Yards will be closed tomorrow in support of the GBV&F shutdown 😢💜

19/11/2025

Hi all the City of Johannesburg has switched the power off at the Children's Memorial Institute!! Time for round two of urgent interdicts etc, etc, and as a result I need to engage with all the powers that be!! I need to postpone the Courage AGM tomorrow, apologies for the inconvenience. Our launch of the Sensory-Space Studio will go ahead at 3pm at Victoria Yards 💜

15/11/2025

Avoidant or restrictive food intake disorder is a typical challenge amongst neurodiverse children. However, unlike other eating disorders, which are often related to identity and self esteem drivers, this is due to the real concerns around the act of eating. Neurodiverse children struggle with different food textures, tastes and the real fear of, being able to swallow, choking or vomiting the food up.
This is important research 🩷❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

This new study investigated Sensory Processing differences in individuals with avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) across the lifespan. The researchers found that food disgust played a distinctive role in the relationship between sensory sensitivity and ARFID symptoms and recommend that this link is further investigated.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2025.108329