Seek support from people who are encouraging you, not those who are trying to decrease your enthusiasm

Today, neurologists understand that the brain is an unbelievably plastic thing, capable of learning a new language or healing from injury well past adolescence. But Barry's experience taught her a deeper, more essential lesson: every person possesses the ability to be a participant in her own rehabilitation. Patients are not merely subjects to be acted upon. Barry is confident that observation of your own habits and ailments can be a powerful tool in changing them -- but only if you surround yourself with people who are willing to listen.

"Seek support from other people," she advises. "If your doctor, if your therapist, if your friends are saying, 'There’s no way you’re going to change,' then guess what? There isn’t any way that you’re going to change. Seek [out only those] who are encouraging to you, not those who are going to try to decrease your enthusiasm." She's not advocating for a pseudo-scientific ignorance of facts, but she sees healing as a constant dialogue between doctor and patient, rather than something that is imposed. It's a reminder that science is so often more about revision than certainty: the process of arriving at an understanding of exactly how much you don't know, and all that you have yet to learn.

Full article: http://bigthink.com/think-tank/rewiring-the-brain

Session 31

Computer exercises and new prism toys. Let's get to it. On another note, 1 liter chocolate milk a day keeps the doctor away. Calories are your friends and weight watchers is bad news. Amen.

There is no perception without action

"Try the following simple experiment: Close or cover one eye. Then look up and down. You might notice that the scene appears to move down when you move your eyes up and vice versa. Yet, your sense of the world is that it is fixed and stable.

Now, take your index finger and push it gently against the eyeball of your open eye. You may notice that the whole world appears to move. Indeed, you might find this slightly nauseating.

In both situations, images moved across your retina, yet your perceptual experience was very different. This difference intrigued some of the greatest psychophysicists of the last century, such as von Holst, Mittelstaedt, and von Helmholtz. One explanation involves a concept called efference copy or corollary discharge. Prior to activating your eye muscles and thus moving your eyes, a command was given by motor areas in your brain that specified the eye movements. This command was sent not just to the eye muscles but to other regions of your brain that then compared the command to the actual consequences. If the command matched the sensory changes, that is, images moved across the retina to the extent predicted by the eye movements, then you saw the world as stable. When you pushed on your eyeball, however, no commands were sent to the eye muscles to move the eyes, so you interpreted the changing images on your retina as an indication that the whole world was moving. Thus, corollary discharge or a copy of the motor command greatly influences your interpretation of what you see."

For the full article by Susan Barry go to: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/eyes-the-brain/201104/there-is-no-perception-without-action  

Why do I have trouble reading?

"If you struggle with keeping both eyes at the same point on the page, you may be able to read fine if asked to read a single sentence or paragraph but not if asked to read for many minutes. We have no trouble recognizing that a child with a mild limp may be able to walk from one end of the classroom to the other with little difficulty, but we would not expect that same child to be able to run a mile on the school playground as well as a child with a normal gait. Why then don't we recognize the impact that eye coordination can have on an endurance activity such as reading?"

Allow me to refer you to the complete article written by Susan Barry:http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/eyes-the-brain/201203/why-do-i-have-trouble-reading

una publicación de Wow Vision Therapy.

Perceptual flow

Now the next problem is this... When I'm calm the fusion is there quite often when just looking straight ahead, but once I start moving around or do a complicated eye task I lose it. So to extrapolate the fusion to moments of movement I do the following:
- I move a lot even though it makes me dizzy and motion sick. I need to do it to get used to it. I'm not talking about extreme things: biking, running, walking, balance excercise, ...
- While doing my fusion computer excercises I move my head around. I can't maintain the fusion, so everything starts dancing around. The world's not stable, that's why I always move my head instead of my gaze. So now I am doing it on purpose to address the problem, even though it makes me feel sick. I will slowly get used to it and my eye movements will get more flexible in order to maintain fusion.