Vision Training

Other problems that can be helped with Vision Training

Vision training is not only for children. Many adults find that vision training can bring improvement or recovery from significant visual difficulty, even in cases in which visual problems have been previously pronounced hopeless by other vision care professionals.

• With the advent of computers in the work environment, we're seeing more adults with eye strain-related vision problems that can be improved through vision training.
• Also, there are special needs patients with developmental or head injury (birth trauma, closed head trauma, etc.) problems which neuro-optometric diagnosis and vision training treatment can uniquely help.

Optometrists understand that the human brain is capable of tremendous recovery and re-development. Today, patients who suffer strokes or other traumatic injuries to the brain and nervous system can receive extensive rehabilitation including therapeutic procedures (exercises) that teach them how to co-ordinate eye and hand, location awareness, visual field awareness and other classical vision training areas. Optometry has pioneered new therapies in the rehabilitation of stroke and head injury patients with visual difficulties.

• Turned eyes or crossed eyes (strabismus) and amblyopia are normally effectively treated with vision training.

Even though most binocular vision disabilities involve problems with how the brain processes the visual information coming in through the eyes, many people with strabismus are offered only surgery to straighten the muscles of the eye. Surgery might make a deviating eye appear straight to others, but it frequently does little to change the way the patient's brain processes incoming visual information. And often the deviating eye returns to its mis-aligned position(s) after surgery as the surgery frequently does not restore binocular vision.

Through a series of eye exercises, patients can develop or recover normal visual skills. The goal of vision training is to train the patient's brain to use the eyes to receive information effectively, comprehend it quickly and react appropriately.

Go to http://www.children-special-needs.org to get more definitions and information on strabismus and amblyopia.