VISUAL THERAPY
According to the American Optometric Association, visual therapy can be defined as a sequence of neurosensory and neuromuscular activities to rehabilitate and improve visual abilities and processing.
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In practice, the therapy consists of a series of exercises, very simple to do, arranged in an order of the easier to the more difficult, to train the different abilities of the vision, each separately and after an integrated way .
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The material used is usually simple: lenses, prisms, filters, occlusors, computer programs, as well as other devices.
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Normally, the exercises are done in the optician's or the optometrist's consultation every few days and at home every day, for a while. The important thing is to be constant to develop and integrate trained skills into everyday life.
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There are two great blocks of visual therapy: binocularity and perception
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Binocularity:
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a- Problems of binocular vision: there is a binocular vision, but inefficient, which causes symptoms and discomfort to the person. The therapy is responsible for training the vergences (convergence and divergence), accommodation and motility.
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b- Problems of lack of binocularity: when the eyes are misaligned, the strabismus occurs. When an eye is always diverted, it becomes amblyopic The therapy is used to stimulate and recover the vision of this eye, sometimes together with the occlusion. Afterwards, exercises are done to improve the coordination between the two eyes and that they align again. Surgery is necessary if the deviation is large.
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Perception:
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a- Problems of visual efficiency: they are very similar to the problems of binocular vision and they are fixed in the same way.
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b- Visual information processing problems: it involves non-motor aspects of visual perception and cognition and its integration with the motor, auditory, language and attention systems. Laterality-directional therapy is done, visuo- motor, fine motor coordination and viso-auditory integration.
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c- Sports vision: visual skills at maximum performance can make the difference in very competitive sports. Thus, one can train: the eye-hand coordination (in baseball, the kites need to anticipate and chop a ball that goes very fast); The perception of the improved depth (motocross runners, skiers, ... go very fast for uneven terrain); the ability to track a ball (in the basketball, tennis, ping-pong the ball is very fast); the peripheral vision (to be aware of the position of the rivals); ...
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