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Oculomotor Dysfunction occurs when there is the absence or defect of controlled, voluntary, and purposeful eye movement. As you might imagine, accurate and well established oculomotor skills are critical when reading, writing, copying information, working on art projects, finding an object in a background, playing sports and many other activities we perform in our highly visual world.

Do you get headaches when you read or use the computer? Does your child cover or close an eye while they read? Do your eyes hurt at the end of the work day? Is homework time with your child a constant battle against avoidance behaviors? Do words move on the page when you are trying to read? These are all symptoms of convergence insufficiency – a very common, and very treatable, vision condition that affects people of all ages.

Convergence insufficiency is an eye teaming deficit that affects approximately 8% of people (that is 4 times more prevalent than glaucoma or an eye turn). You do not outgrow convergence insufficiency, which is why it can have lifelong impacts on your vision. Convergence insufficiency can also be caused by a traumatic brain injury (even a concussion). Here is what you need to know about this vision condition that causes headaches, double vision and reading difficulties.

The eyes have been called the 'window to the soul'. They are also a window into the brain and are being used to help diagnose concussions. Doctors and trainers are currently using eye tracking skills to help assess for the presence of a concussion, or mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Research is also under way to determine how eye tests can help athletes, military personnel, and anyone else who takes an unfortunate fall or is involved in a motor vehicle accident.

A parent called into our office with this question last week, and she is not the first to do so.  Vision therapy takes many forms. Some optometrists offer in-office vision therapy with a trained therapist, others put patients on the computer or in group sessions, and others prescribe a home-based program. At Advanced Vision Therapy Center we provide all vision therapy sessions in a one-on-one environment; relying on our therapists, rather than a computer, to train visual skills. Abundant research has been performed in the area of vision therapy and the effectiveness of these various modalities. The research continues to show that in-office vision therapy with trained professionals is the most effective treatment for convergence insufficiency (a binocular vision condition). So it should not come as a surprise that when you sit a kid in front of a computer for months, the question often arises