Strabismus (Squint)

Strabismus / Squint is also known as crossed eyes. It is when both eyes do not look in the same direction at the same time. Although it usually happens in infants and young children, it can happen in adults as well.

Some reasons why a person may have strabismus is due to genetics, associated disease such as tumour or problems with their muscles and nerves that control the eye. It may also happen after a stroke or head injury.

Fortunately strabismus can be treated. It is better to treat strabismus earlier as children will not outgrow it. If left untreated, it can lead to vision damage including double and reduced vision or amblyopia (lazy eye). Strabismus is treated through vision therapy which is supposed to help the muscles work together as a team to allow both eyes to look in the same place at the same time.

​At Vision and Perception Practice, we provide the latest equipment and skills to assess a child’s eye tracking matched with norms, visual perceptual skills, visual information processing skills, and more to fully understand their learning abilities.

The most prominent case who used Vision Therapy to fix her squint is Susan R. Barry. Susan R. Barry is a professor of neurobiology at Mount Holyoke College. She was born nearly stereoblind and suffered from double vision after attempting to correct her squint with surgeries. Much later in her life, she embarked on intensive vision therapy.

Susan acquired stereovision in 2012 at the age of 67.

Her astonishing success has resulted in much media attention for it challenged the conventional wisdom of missed opportunity for neural change beyond the perceived ‘critical period’ during childhood. She was dubbed as ‘Stereo Sue’ in an acclaimed New Yorker article written by neurologist Oliver Sacks.

Susan Barry has gone on to write her own book that is entitled ‘Fixing My Gaze’. The book describes Susan’s astonishing experience of gaining 3D stereovision after a lifetime of seeing in only two dimensions. Barry offers a poignant and revelatory account of neuroplasticity and change regardless of age. Intensive vision therapy created new neural connections, and with them, a new view of the world.

Read more about Susan’s journey in attaining stereovision.

http://www.fixingmygaze.com/
https://youtu.be/XCCtphdXhq8
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/06/19/s00tereo-sue