Page 411 - Total War on PTSD

Helping Others Learn
As the 21st century unfolds, optometrists are now in a position to be at the forefront of brain function, by using eyeglasses to alter the nervous system. By applying these new discoveries in neuroscience and neurophotonics to eye care, I’ve made the mission of my clinic, now called the Mind-Eye Institute, to transform the lives of children and adults who suffer from lingering symptoms caused by such problems as brain injuries and post- traumatic stress disorder, or those who have been labeled with diagnoses such as autism, learning disorders or neurodegenerative diseases.
My commitment to this goal began when as an apprentice to Albert Sutton, OD in Florida. He had spent decades devoted to having neuro-optometric techniques mainstreamed, having learned from the Father of Neuro-Optometry, A.M. Skeffington in the 1940s. After seven years of studying with him, my first private optometric practice was opening in 1992. Even then, as new studies emerged in neuro-optometry, neurophotonics, and neuro-optometric rehabilitation, I realized that standard optometric practices based on sharpening central eyesight were insufficient to meet all patient needs. A person can have sharp 20/20 central eyesight and perfect hearing, but if their eyes and ears are not integrated and their brain is impaired, the entire neurological system becomes analogous to an orchestra without a conductor. Each musician may be quite talented with his or her learned instrument, but they must play in synchronization with one another for the experience to occur as intended. If they are moving through the composition at different speeds, the result is noise, not music; they need a conductor to follow. Eye-ear co-ordination is developed as learning occurs. Standardized eye and ear tests check eyesight and hearing separately but fail to determine whether they are properly integrated. Testing of the brain’s conductor is missing.
When working with Soldiers who had been in the Gulf War, they would tell me stories of how a flash of something in their peripheral eyesight could trigger a memory from
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