Brain 'retrained,' scientist says

[JEEP]

I found this article utterly amazing:

vision
Brain 'retrained,' scientist says
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 3:13 AM
By Rinker Buck
THE HARTFORD COURANT

In the early 1960s, when Susan Barry was enrolled in third grade, the assistant principal showed up one morning to demote her from the class for above-average students to the one with "special problems."

A boy was told to drag her desk behind her down the hall.

The scraping sound on the floor haunted her for years.

So went just one of many humiliations experienced by Barry, who since infancy had suffered a vision problem that affects millions of children but is still misunderstood by science.

She developed strabismus, a misalignment of the eyes that causes various conditions -- in her case, cross-eye.

Her eyes were apparently straightened through three childhood surgeries but still poorly aligned, and they sent confusing signals to her brain.

As a result, she had reading difficulties and double vision.

Barry compensated like people with similar vision problems. She learned to read because her brain suppressed the image from one eye. Yet she could barely see objects at a distance.

Her brain couldn't compare the images from both eyes -- which would have allowed depth perception. Thus, she lacked the stereo vision of normal sight.

To judge distances, Barry used other senses or cues -- such as placing her hands in front of her or counting steps.

Doctors told her that this condition could never be changed because she had passed the crucial period of early childhood, after which the brain becomes fixed and cannot be rewired to read correct signals from the eyes.

But now, in a development that could affect such areas as helping those with learning disabilities and treating soldiers with traumatic brain injuries, Barry has proved that the adult brain is considerably more flexible than thought.

In Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey Into Seeing in Three Dimensions, Barry describes how, at 48, she began vision therapy that accomplished what the best scientists of her generation said could never be achieved -- a brain that can read eye signals properly and allow sight in three dimensions.

"The majority of ophthalmologists still tell parents that there is nothing they can do for their child after age 7 or 8, because the brain is already fully formed," said Barry, a professor of neurobiology at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

"Well, I was 48 when the right developmental optometrist taught me how to retrain my brain. The conventional wisdom was wrong, and it turns out that the adult brain is a lot more adaptable than we thought."

She became fascinated with neurobiology and what it could teach her about her condition. Because her distance vision was poor, and Barry was self-conscious about how her eyes appeared to others, she didn't make strong eye contact.

As a neurobiologist, Barry developed a lifelong interest in how people with vision problems and other disabilities compensate by strengthening their senses. Fixing My Gaze is full of tales of marathon runners, ice skaters and dancers who developed careers by learning to "see" in other ways.

Barry's vision breakthrough began seven years ago. Annoyed that she was a neurobiologist and a vision specialist who nevertheless ignored the students in the back of her classroom because it was too hard to recognize their faces, Barry sought the help of a developmental optometrist who prescribed vision therapy.

This therapy involved small wooden balls suspended on strings, complicated eye charts seen through prisms and objects waved in her peripheral vision while she jumped on a trampoline. The aim was to focus both eyes on one object.

One day, as she left her optometrist's office after a second year of therapy, Barry glanced at her car's steering wheel and, suddenly, it was "floating in its own space, with a palpable volume of empty space between the wheel and the dashboard."

For the first time, Barry realized, she was seeing with normal, three-dimensional vision because her brain had been retrained.

After a few more years of intensive training -- which she continues in a homemade lab -- Barry was seeing normally, and a whole new world of distance and 3-D vision opened up to her.

Discovering 3-D sight and writing Fixing My Gaze, Barry said, have motivated her to become an advocate for people with vision problems. About 4 percent of the population suffers from some form of strabismus. But when the population of children with learning disabilities and other deficiencies is considered, perhaps 10 percent of the school-age population could be helped.

"I want to explore the whole issue of rehabilitation strategies," Barry said. "If the adult brain is more adaptable than we thought, how can we use that discovery to help people with brain injuries and a host of other problems.

mark mirko the hartford courant

Thanks to intensive vision therapy, Susan Barry says, she finally sees images at a distance and in three dimensions.

"But when the population of children with learning disabilities and other deficiencies is considered, perhaps 10 percent of the school-age population could be helped."

When I was living in a county seat in the middle of WV, I remember reading an article in the local paper on a person who 'cured' their dyslexia by doing some kind of exercise/dance routine. I have never seen anything similar in regards to dyslexia. I think it's fantastic that the brain's ability to retrain doesn't end in early childhood. Hopefully, this info can be a breakthrough for many other treatment options.