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“Of all the sensory receptors we have, 70 percent are in our eyes alone.

That’s 260 million (130 million per eye) receptors taking information in through the eyes and sending it to the brain, by way of 2.4 million nerve fibers.

This adds up to our eyes sending our brain 109 gigabytes of data every second.

Most of us can process that—and a lot of it is selectively ignored by our brain—but it’s the athletes who can process that the fastest who are among the greatest…

…The sensory cognition, that neuro, is the new frontier. This is really the next phase of human performance”.

Excerpted from Head In The Game: The Mental Engineering of the World’s Elite Athletes by Brandon Sneed
Steph Curry’s Secrets to Success: Brain Training, Float Tanks and Strobe Goggles | Bleacher Report

Sensory Technology
“I wear goggles with flashing lights that obstruct my vision (while dribbling and passing). Those kinds of sensory distractions are variables that take my mind off the ball and sharpen the brain, helping me neurologically. All of that stuff helps me slow the game down”

– Stephen Curry

FITLIGHT Trainer
The FITLIGHT Trainer™ has several applications and can be used by individuals of all levels and developmental stages whereby they can experience a powerful training experience for a wide range of physical conditioning, reaction/response training, vision training and numerous other physical and cognitive skills training.

On February 26, 2017, Dr. Penelope Suter, OD, gave a lecture on Post Brain-Injury Vision Rehabilitation — Enhancing the Future of Functional/Behavioral Optometry.  The focus was on neuro vision rehabilitation for patients who may present with common oculomotor/binocular dysfunctions due to:

• Stroke (adult and pediatric)
• Traumatic brain injury (TBI) related to auto accidents, work, etc.
• Sports related concussion
• Veterans
• Children with vision and reading problems
• Patients with learning disabilities, ie: Austim spectrum

A few concepts stood out during the lecture:

1. Concussion: The symptoms of mild concussion, expected to spontaneously resolve within weeks of occurrence, can persist for years after, as reported by veterans.
2. Among 262 athletes, 43% of those with a history of concussion reported they had knowingly hidden symptoms …to stay in a game, and 22% of athletes overall indicated that they would be unlikely to report concussion symptoms to a coach in the future. (1)  Meanwhile, a retrospective review of 159 student records from elementary through college aged students showed that in 43.5% of sports related concussion cases, the patient returned to the sport too soon, and 44.7% returned to school too soon when “too soon” was defined by regression. (2)
3. Besides numerous vision deficits, visual spatial neglect is extremely common.  In one study, patients hospitalized with stroke reported visual spatial neglect in up to 82% of assessable right hemisphere stroke patients and 65% of assessable left hemisphere stroke. (3)
4. Huber and Weisel’s experimental results that lead to the conclusion of a critical period for vision was “over-interpreted”.  The partial reorganization of receptive fields for sensory stimuli can change in minutes of a lesioned cortex. Plasticity is the basis of therapy and learning.
5. Neuro and developmental optometrists are well equipped to test and treat these patients to drastically improve their functional vision, with specific rehabilitation techniques and optical treatment methods.
6.  Dr. Suter’s take home: Vision deficits are generally COVERT, thus dysfunction in the visual system is most often demonstrated in motor, balance, attentional, cognitive, and behavioral deficits.

Dr. Penelope Suter, OD, FCOVD, offers decades of professional experience, while showing humility for the complexity of this subject, inviting other specialists to contribute to the conversation. She has a private practice in Bakersfield and is the first editor of the textbook Vision Rehabilitation: multidisciplinary care of the patient following brain injury, (Suter & Harvey, CRC Press, 2011).

BRAIN HQ: Brain training to improve perceptual speed

References:

1. Sports-related concussion: anonymous survey of a collegiate cohort
2. Premature return to play and return to learn after a sport-related concussion
3. The incidence of neglect phenomena and related disorders in patients with an acute right or left hemisphere stroke

Dr. Suter References