Neuro Vision Therapy & Rehab
20/20 Vision is not Enough
Vision is more than seeing fine detail.
Proper functional vision involves precise eye movements, eye coordination, communication with the brain and our body.
This requires complex neurological and muscular processing that needs to be learned through proper life experiences.
"Vision is our dominant sense
More than just sight is measured in terms of visual acuity.
Vision is the process of deriving meaning from what is seen.
It is a complex, learned and developed set of functions that involve a multitude of skills. Research estimates that 80 - 85 % of our perception, learning, cognition and activities are mediated through vision.
The ultimate purpose of the visual process is to arrive at an appropriate motor, and/or cognitive response.
The process of vision can be broken down into three general categories:
1) visual acuity and visual field,
2) visual motor abilities and
3) visual perception. "
Thomas Politzer, OD, former NORA , Neuro Optometric Rehabilitation Association President
What is Vision Therapy ?
Vision Therapy teaches our eyes and brain to work together.
Vision therapy is like physical therapy for the visual system.
The techniques and procedures are used to treat the whole person, not just the eyes.
The activities are designed to improve Functional Vision Skills which include eye tracking, eye teaming, focusing, and visual processing. When we teach the eyes and brain how to work together more efficiently, we can improve visual function.
This results in an improvement in quality of life due to decreased symptoms and improved performance.
Functional Vision Skills
Functional Vision involves 4 visual skills necessary for learning:
Tracking
The ability to move our eyes across the printed page smoothly and accurately without strain.
Focusing
Our eyes and brain work together to maintain accurate focusing and be able to switch back and forth for different distances as needed for the task.
Eye Teaming
The ability of the brain to localize objects at the correct distance so the lines of sight from both eyes intersect at the object.
Visual Perceptual Skills
This includes understanding what we see, identifying it, assessing its importance and relating it to previously stored information or experiences in the brain. For example, recognizing words and discriminating between a “p” and “q”
Many children and adults do not realize that their struggles in the classroom and/or workplace are linked to functional vision.
A person can be smart but do not get good grades at school or working hard but not very productive at work.
Poor functional vision skills can have a detrimental effect on classroom performance, self-esteem, and behaviour.
One out of four children has a functional vision problem that is interfering with their ability to achieve.
With proper diagnosis and treatment, reading levels improve significantly, comprehension increases and even sports performance can improve.
We can help you or your family member to achieve this.
resources
The Amblyopia Project
The place for doctors and patients to learn more about advanced treatment in Amblyopia care.
Amblyopia is a treatable, neurodevelopmental form of vision loss.
It is caused when there is a disruption in binocular vision in infancy/toddlerhood either by misalignment of the eyes (also known as strabismus), or when one eye has a greater farsightedness/nearsightedness and/or astigmatism, or blockage of light, such as infantile cataracts. It typically occurs in one eye (but can occur in both eyes) even when best corrected with glasses or contacts.
Over 12 million people in the US alone are affected (about 3.5% of the US population).
It is preventable if the factors causing it are identified and treated in infancy or early toddlerhood, but it can be treated at any age.
Binocular Vision Therapy is a proven effective treatment for amblyopia.
It involves office-based optometric vision therapy (along with home oriented activities) guided by the doctor and vision therapist utilizing devices, prisms, lenses and dichoptic filters to treat the underlying suppression and related developmental vision delays plus help the two eyes to work together.
The Concussion Project
Concussions result from a direct blow to the head
or, indirectly from something such as whiplash.
The impact causes the brain to hit against the inside of the skull causing brain bruising. It is estimated that nearly 4 million concussions occur yearly in the United States.
10-20% of concussions result in symptoms that can last weeks, months, or more.
When these symptoms persist, a condition known as post-concussion syndrome occurs.
Research suggest that over 50% of patients with concussion or post concussion syndrome have visual problems that may cause headaches, eye headaches, double vision, eye strain or blurred vision.
It may even cause students to have decreased reading speed and comprehension.
Optometrists have a great understanding of the visual system.
They have the opportunity to retrain the visual system to help eliminate the visual symptoms most commonly associated with post-concussion syndrome.
This is done through a program of neuro-optometric rehabilitation
NORA_Neuro Optometric Rehabilitation Association
Vision & Brain Injury
Thomas Politzer, OD, former NORA President
Vision is our dominant sense
More than just sight is measured in terms of visual acuity, vision is the process of deriving meaning from what is seen. It is a complex, learned and developed set of functions that involve a multitude of skills. Research estimates that eighty to eighty five percent of our perception, learning, cognition and activities are mediated through vision.
The ultimate purpose of the visual process is to arrive at an appropriate motor, and/or cognitive response.
There is an extremely high incidence (greater than 50%) of visual and visual-cognitive disorders in neurologically impaired patients (traumatic brain injury, cerebral vascular accidents, multiple sclerosis etc.) Rosalind Gianutsos, Ph.D.
"Visual-perceptual dysfunction is one of the most common devastating residual impairments of head injury". Barbara Zoltan, M.A., O.T.R.
"The majority of individuals that recover from a traumatic brain injury will have binocular function difficulties in the form of strabismus, phoria, oculomotor dysfunction, convergence and accommodative abnormalities". William Padula, O.D.
resources
NORA_Neuro Optometric Rehabilitation Association
Vision & Brain Injury
Thomas Politzer, OD, former NORA President
Vision is our dominant sense
More than just sight is measured in terms of visual acuity, vision is the process of deriving meaning from what is seen. It is a complex, learned and developed set of functions that involve a multitude of skills. Research estimates that eighty to eighty five percent of our perception, learning, cognition and activities are mediated through vision. The ultimate purpose of the visual process is to arrive at an appropriate motor, and/or cognitive response.
The process of vision can be broken down into three general categories; 1) visual acuity and visual field, 2) visual motor abilities and 3) visual perception.
VISUAL ACUITY and VISUAL FIELD
Visual Acuity - This refers to clarity of sight. It is commonly measured using the Snellen chart. and noted, for example, as 20/20, 20/50, 20/200 etc. Visual acuity becomes blurred in various refractive conditions, for example, myopia (nearsighted), hyperopia (far-sighted), astigmatism (mixed), and presbyopia (age related loss of focusing).
Visual Field - This is the complete central and peripheral range, or paNORAma of vision. Various neurologic conditions, such as stroke, cause characteristic losses of the visual field, for example hemianopsia. The person may, or may not, concurrently demonstrate a visual neglect which is a perceptual loss of vision and visual motor integration to the side of the visual field loss.
VISUAL MOTOR ABILITIES
Alignment - This refers to eye posture.
If the eyes are straight and aligned the eye posture is termed phoric. If an eye turns in, out, up or down compared to the other eye then the eyes are not straight or aligned and the condition is termed strabismus. Exotropia is a form of strabismus where an eye turns out, esotropia is where an eye turns in, hypertropia is where an eye turns up, and hypotropia is where an eye turns down. These can also occur in combination, such as hyper- exotropia, or hypo-esotropia.
- Fixation - The ability to steadily and accurately gaze at an object of regard. This is most dysfunctional in nystagmus which is an uncontrollable shaking of the eyes.
- Pursuits - The ability to smoothly and accurately track, or follow, a moving object
- Saccades - The ability to quickly and accurately look, or scan, from one object to another
- Accommodation - The ability to accurately focus on an object of regard, sustain that focusing of the eyes, and to change focusing when looking at different distances
- Convergence - The ability to accurately aim the eyes at an object of regard and to track an object as it moves towards and away from the person
- Binocularity - The integration of accommodation and convergence
- Stereopsis - Depth perception
VISUAL PERCEPTION
- Visual-Motor Integration - Eye-hand, eye-foot, and eye-body coordination
- Visual-Auditory Integration - The ability to relate and associate what is seen and heard
- Visual Memory - The ability to remember and recall information that is seen
- Visual Closure - The ability "to fill in the gaps", or complete a visual picture based on seeing only some of the parts
- Spatial Relationships - The ability to know "where I am" in relation to objects and space around me and to know where objects are in relation to one another
- Figure-Ground Discrimination - The ability to discern form and object from background
