OBJECTIVE: This case study reports on selected measures of locomotion (running) in a 5-year-old patient with xeroderma pigmentosum after chiropractic care. CLINICAL FEATURE: A 5-year-old female patient (16.4 kg, 99.1 cm) with xeroderma pigmentosum (type A) volunteered to participate in the experiment with the consent of her parents. The patient had well-documented signs of delayed fine motor (eg, difficulty with writing, coloring, cutting) and gross motor control (eg, balance and coordination dysfunction and falling while running), and delayed speech. INTERVENTION AND OUTCOMES: Trunk forward lean angles, step lengths, and hip horizontal translations were assessed by video as the participant ran as fast as possible down a laboratory runway. After chiropractic manipulation (adjustments), the patient reduced the trunk forward lean angle to become more vertical (P = .000). In addition, the patient experienced an increase in step length (P = .031). No significant change in lateral translation was observed after the intervention. CONCLUSION: For this patient with xeroderma pigmentosum, chiropractic manipulation (adjustments) resulted in immediate changes in running performance. Further investigation is needed to examine the effect of chiropractic on locomotion in both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients.

J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 2009 Jan;32(1):93-8. Smith DL, Walsh M, Smith JP. Essence of Wellness Chiropractic Center, Eaton, Ohio 45320, USA. drdean@essenceofwellness.com

by Mark Gorkin, LICSW

Transforming the Conventional into the Creative: Discovering and Designing the "Bright Crystals" of Contradiction

These days everyone wants to be creative, to "think out of the box." But how do you walk the talk? As a workshop leader who often tries to give organizations a "Jolt of CPR: Being Creative, Passionate and Risk-Taking," let me share one concept that just might be an integral component of creative thinking and problem-solving. On stage, I like to introduce this concept through a thought-provoking and, possibly, unsettling exercise that was inspired by the research of Dr. Albert Rothenberg, as reported in his book The Emerging Goddess: Creativity in the Sciences and the Arts. (The title evokes the mythic imagery of Athena, Greek goddess of both war and creativity, being born full-sized from the head of her almighty father, Zeus.) This Yale Psychiatrist and Cognitive Psychologist found that subjects who responded with more opposites or antonyms in a word association test – e.g., "wet" to the word "dry" or "fast" to the word "slow" – had higher scores on certain creative personality measures than subjects generating mostly synonyms or "original" responses. (Rothenberg's sample was fairly small and at most his results can be suggestive. My casual workshop trials indicate that usually less than ten percent of the audience free associate predominantly with antonyms. Of course, I remind participants that this is only one informal measure of creativity.) Considering the small or informal sample size, nonetheless, why might there be a correlation between contradictory association and personality differentiation? To expand your worldview and problem-solving vision, consider these Seven Cognitive Complexity Keys for Transforming the Conventional into the Creative:

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