The Dynamic Nature of Vision

The Berne Podcast with Dr. Sam Berne

To join our membership, go to: https://drsambernesmembership.com/

To enroll in our practitioner’s training go go: https://www.drsamberne.com/practitioners-training/

Keywords

functional anatomy, vision therapy, eye health, structural anatomy, color therapy, optic nerve, retina, eye muscles, visual pathways, accommodation
Summary

This conversation delves into the intricacies of functional anatomy, particularly focusing on the eye. Sam Berne emphasizes the importance of understanding both structural and functional aspects of anatomy to enhance vision therapy practices. The discussion covers various components of the eye, including the cornea, iris, lens, retina, and optic nerve, while also exploring the impact of color therapy and the role of eye muscles. Berne highlights the significance of dynamic processes in vision, such as accommodation and tracking, and addresses common issues like eye floaters and strabismus. The conversation concludes with a powerful message about the interconnection between function and structure in the eye, advocating for a holistic approach to vision therapy.
Takeaways

Understanding functional anatomy is crucial for vision therapy.
The eye’s anatomy includes both structural and functional components.
Color therapy can rejuvenate the retina and improve vision.
Stress and toxicity can significantly impact visual health.
The optic nerve is essential for transmitting visual information to the brain.
Accommodation is a dynamic process that can be improved through therapy.
Eye floaters are often a result of fluid stagnation in the eye.
Tracking exercises can enhance reading and writing skills in children.
Vision therapy can address issues like strabismus without surgery.
Function can influence structure, leading to improvements in eye health.
Titles

Unlocking the Secrets of Functional Anatomy
The Dynamic Nature of Vision
Exploring the Eye: Anatomy and Function
Color Therapy: A New Approach to Vision
Sound Bites

“Vision is dynamic, not static.”
“Functional anatomy opens the door for vision therapy.”
“Color therapy can help the retina get stronger.”
“Stress affects the eyes significantly.”
“The optic nerve connects the eye to the brain.”
“Accommodation is a dynamic process.”
“Eye floaters are a common concern.”
“Tracking exercises improve reading and writing.”
“Function can change structure in the eye.”
Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Functional Anatomy
03:05 Understanding Structural vs. Functional Anatomy
05:48 The Eye’s Anatomy: Cornea, Iris, and Sclera
09:04 The Lens and Its Role in Vision
12:04 The Retina: Function and Importance
15:02 Color Therapy and Its Impact on Vision
17:48 The Optic Nerve and Visual Pathways
20:57 Accommodation and Focusing Mechanisms
24:02 The Vitreous Body and Eye Health
26:58 Eye Muscles and Their Functions
29:48 Tracking and Eye Movement Exercises
33:06 Primitive Reflexes and Vision Therapy
36:04 The Role of Cranial Nerves in Eye Function
38:56 Strabismus and Vision Therapy Solutions
41:51 Conclusion: The Interconnection of Eye Function and Therapy

Sam Berne (00:00.098)
Hey everybody. Welcome to the podcast. So today I’m going to bring you into a lecture I gave on functional anatomy and this is something we use in our practitioner training. So I thought I would include part of it in the podcast. So I hope you enjoy the show. Here we go. Why do we want to learn anatomy?

Well, if you’re going to be an expert in vision knowing the foundations of the major structures of the eye is very important.

And one of the things I want to make a distinction about is structural anatomy. That means knowing the terms, you know, like this is the arm. This is the leg and you know, you can get into the more technical things that’s called structural anatomy, but that is static and that’s physical. What I have found is that when you look at the function of the eye, like how does it work?

then that is a what we call dynamic aspect and vision is dynamic. It’s not static. And when you just focus on the structural aspects of anatomy and in this case the eyes, the only thing that you can offer is surgery needles and drugs.

and that the eye is separate from the body. But in functional anatomy, what we know is that our eyes dynamically produce vision and adapt to environmental demands. And in functional anatomy, we emphasize how vision integrates with the brain, the vestibular system, and our body systems.

Sam Berne (01:46.314)
So understanding those roles, like when you work with kids, visual tracking, visual focus, visual coordination, visual perception, cognitive abilities, some of the gross motor skills like primitive reflexes or balance orientation, the functional aspects of vision and functional aspects of

Anatomy opens the door for you to say, okay, I’m doing vision therapy today. I can offer you some nutritional counseling. I can take a look at the colored part of your eye, the iris, and I can tell certain constitutional things like certain foods you might want to eat or certain lifestyle things you want to do craniosacral therapy color therapy. So the functional anatomy is really an important

part of this. our objectives today is I’m going to introduce just the basic and anatomy of the eye but looking at it from a more functional point of view and we start from the outside and work our way inside. So the outside eyelids the white part of the eye called the sclera, the cornea, which is the clear window.

The iris, is the colored part of the eye, the pupil, is our gatekeeper allowing light into the eyes, our lens and our focusing system. And then the retina photoreceptors, the optic nerve.

And then we’re going to just briefly touch on the liquid part of the eye, the aqueous, the front part of the eye and the back part, the vitreous, the eye muscles and their eye movements and how that affects conditions like lazy eye or crossed eyes. And then finally the integration of visual pathways in the brain.

Sam Berne (03:42.89)
So we’re going to start off with the cornea and the iris. So the cornea is the clear window that we look out and people can look in.

And on the left side here of the slide, this is the white part of the eye. It’s called the sclera and you can see these blood vessels and in the future. I’m going to teach you how these blood vessels affect our health.

There’s a whole body of study called sclerology where we look at the white part of the eye and we can actually tell what’s the health of the liver. What’s the health of the gallbladder? Do we have Candida? We can actually look at this white part of the eye and we can tell if a person has got systemic or metabolic imbalances. But for today, we just say that the white part of the eye is the sclera.

We obviously have the eyelids which help us produce the tears that cover the cornea and the eyelids are very important around producing the tears that keep our eyes moist. So it’s very common for people to have inflammation in the eyelids and this causes all kinds of problems with dryness and eye pain and that affects the cornea, is the transparent

of the eye. So just to repeat the white part of the eye is the sclera, the eyelids house the glands and the cornea is the clear window of the eye with a lot of nerve endings and you need to keep that cornea covered with tears and that’s what the eyelids produce.

Sam Berne (05:34.54)
And then if we go back a little bit, we see the colored part of the eye and there three main colors. There’s the blue eyes. There’s the mixed color, which like their hazel and then there’s the deep brown color.

And the color of the the color of the eyes shows us a couple things genetic tendencies like things that have been passed down from your mom and dad your grandma and your granddad, you know conditions like perhaps diabetes or heart disease or connective tissue issues or liver problems. So we can see patterns in the color part of the eye that you know, we can say ask the question. Well, did your mom

and dad or grandma and granddad, anybody have diabetes and

For example, if we identify a pattern there, we can we can counsel the person and say, you know, it’s probably better that you don’t have high glycemic index sugar foods because if you do you’re going to have a tendency toward diabetes. And of course, we know sugar for the eyes is deadly. It causes a lot of eye problems. So we can look at the colored part of the eye and we can determine. Okay, what is the systemic health?

What’s the glandular health?

Sam Berne (06:55.702)
What’s the digestive and metabolic health? So in a later module, we’ll talk a little more about the specifics. This is just an overview today. So sclera white part eyelids cornea colored part of the eye is the iris and then finally the pupil and the pupil tells us the state of our nervous system. So for example, when our pupils are always dilated even in

dim light because the pupil should get smaller when we go into bright light, but it should dilate when we go into dim light. But if it’s always dilated that suggests that the person is under a lot of visual stress and their peripheral vision is very tunneled. It’s just a very simple thing. And in our next lecture when we meet I’m going to give you a functional vision screening.

process and it’s a very detailed way to analyze the eyes.

looking at the pupils, looking at the eye alignment, looking at tracking. It’s going to be perfect for you. We’ve used it at Kid Power in Albuquerque with the occupational therapists for years. It’s basically called a functional vision screening. And I know you already have a screening that you’re doing, but this will just be a great add-on for you to really give you a very specific analysis on what is happening in terms of the visual

system and part of that is the pupil health and when a person’s pupils are really dilated all the time that suggests that they’re under a lot of stress and we can take note of that. That’s why it’s a question I asked quite a bit. Are you light sensitive? As an example.

Sam Berne (08:53.868)
All right, so as we move back in the eye, the next thing we look at is you can see here, this is a person that has a cataract and this is called the lens of the eye.

Now, basically what the lens is is it’s the part of the eye that allows light to come through it that bends eventually to the retina. And again, when you work with your kiddies, what happens is is that the lens of the eye, the muscles that attached to the lens are not working properly and that that process is called accommodation.

And we have conditions like accommodation excess too much focusing spasm in the muscles or accommodative insufficiency where a person can’t move the muscles very well. So like shifting from near to far back to near is difficult. So this is where vision therapy working on improving the muscular flexibility of the lens is very helpful in improving the the brain processing.

the reading, the learning, the copying from the board. So this is the functional aspect of the lens. Most eye doctors just look at the structure of the lens. Oh, you’ve got a cataract. Let’s cut it out. But what we’re talking about is how does that lens work and how do those muscles make the lens bend in a way so that a person can shift their focus from near to far?

When the light is focusing on the the through the lens, it actually focuses on the retina and the retina is the back part of the eye. It’s actually made of brain tissue. So every part of the eye is brain. Basically, what happens is is when

Sam Berne (10:44.15)
The light strikes the retina changes it into an electrical impulse and then it converts it and it moves it back to the brain. This is how we see and we have different parts of the retina. have the rods, which is our peripheral vision night vision our cones, which is our specific.

fine detail vision and then the macula which this is where the cones are. This is the central part of the retina where we get very sharp central seeing and the fovea is even inside the macula, but it’s all about visual acuity. So the significance of this is that again, when you’re working with people with learning disabilities or

you know, visual developmental delays. A lot of times there’s a confusion in the peripheral vision, central vision, and this is where color therapy can work really well at re stimulating different parts of the retina that become desensitized to light and in color therapy. It’s a great tool that can help the retina get stronger.

by having a person look at different colors on a daily basis this begins to bring the retina back to life. remember when I was doing

a lot of very specific color and light therapy. What we would use to do is we used to measure a person’s peripheral vision and most of the time when they had learning problems, they had very small peripheral vision like it was tunneled vision and we would give them color therapy and over a period of two to three weeks just by doing the color therapy. We would see the peripheral vision open up again. Once the peripheral visions opened up the memory got better. The balance got better.

Sam Berne (12:45.378)
The depth perception got better just by doing the color therapy the color therapy. I’m referring to we use combinations of colors like red purple in a gel like a mask, which I will make available to you or yellow green combination or a blue green combination or therapy. I’m referring to is very targeted towards waking up the retina that has gone to

sleep because of stress or toxicity. The color therapy you just showed me is more subtle and it works more in the area of visual coordination. So it doesn’t encompass the whole thing like the the color therapy. I’m referring to they’re wearing it, you know for say 10 minutes a day and you do it every day and then it becomes a cumulative effect of your two eyes really

getting more peripheral engagement. And when your peripheral gets more engagement, so many things change immediately like depth, reception, memory, balance, and so on. Even when the eyes are open, the retina is not working. It’s like the retina is a dead zone. Yeah, it’s not the light is not being absorbed with the eyes open.

Yeah, exactly. You would say that’s like how could that be but that’s what stress does. That’s what toxicity does when I measured people’s peripheral vision. We would measure it with the eyes open. They had no awareness on the sides. Everything was like right in here. It was very very tunneled and yet they didn’t have a glasses prescription. I couldn’t give them a glasses prescription to correct the tunneling.

I would have to give them color therapy to open it up. That’s how strongly stress affects the eyes. mean, I have had thousands and thousands of patients who have come to see me where their visual deterioration has not been able to be explained going to a regular doctor.

Sam Berne (15:02.382)
The regular doctor says, oh, it’s all in your head. You know, it’s a mental problem. You’re just making it up. And what we used to see is that in

first grade period. So October November, I would see so many kids coming into my office who had this narrow tunneling syndrome. In fact, one of my teachers his name was dr. John Streff s t-r-e-f-f you could Google the Streff syndrome because he he developed it and what the Streff syndrome is is that there’s no medical or physical reason

Why are eyes tunnel? There’s no physical disease. There’s no prescription that we can give and he would call that the streft syndrome and became very famous. You can Google it and basically what it is is kids who are under a great deal of stress, but they can’t see but there’s nothing physically wrong. It’s emotional and

psychological because their eyes are so overwhelmed that they shut down. Now, this is with their eyes open. It’s not with eyes closed. It’s with the eyes open. So when I teach you color therapy and that bright light color therapy, that’s going to be a great tool for you to be able to work with those kids to get them out of the stress.

The streft syndrome we’re going to spend a whole module on the science of color and light therapy and you’re going to you’re going to be very very expert at being able to understand it. It’s one of my most asked questions on social media how to do color therapy because it’s not really, you know taught.

Sam Berne (16:58.702)
And I’ll go into the history of color therapy and so on and another module, but this is very stimulating. You’re getting stimulated here. Like hmm, this is another tool that you’re going to be able to use. It’s like a vision therapy exercise, but you’re going to be able to use it to turn these kids around another thing.

All right. I want to move on because we want to get to the optic nerve. So this little yellow disk here, this is called the optic nerve. And basically again, it’s it’s connecting to the brain. I’m going to send this hand out to you. So you’ll see it and you can see these vessels from the retina going into this nerve and then it goes right back to the brain. So the optic nerve is the kind of the place

Where the information goes through the retina through the eye back to the brain and there’s what we call pathway called the visual pathway and there are there’s circuitry. There’s basically axons neurons. This is part of the the nerve transmission the wires so to speak so the electricity can go through the wires back to the brain. Now when you came for your exam and we had you look at the dog and the pig

And you were saying something like, part of the pig is disappearing. What’s happening is on the optic nerve visual pathway. The nerves are not working. They’re not passing the information back to the brain. That’s why the pig disappears. Now, some will say it’s an eye problem. Some will say it’s the brain problem. I think it’s both but

People are shocked when they look at that dog and pig and they try to touch the pig, which is the left eye and they go my goodness, the pig is disappearing and you go why why is the pig disappearing? Well, because this visual pathway is so overwhelmed that it shuts down. It’s like it’s like a circuit that breaks.

Sam Berne (19:07.564)
Like, you know, have you ever had your electricity go out in your house? Probably you’ve had that it’s just like that. It’s like it’s it’s an overload. There’s a circuit that breaks and so again, vision therapy is a great way to help fix that breakdown in the visual pathway. Again, eye doctors what they do is they measure vision through the eye chart.

Okay, and it’s not really vision. It’s eyesight. It’s glasses. It’s eyeballs. And so they miss every time they miss

The the suppression and vision again, I can’t tell you thousands and thousands of patients that have come to see me who’ve had very weird vision problems. And when we do that test the dog and the pig they fall out of their chair. Why is the pig disappearing? Why aren’t why aren’t professionals testing this because it explains why they’re having a problem. Okay, so

That’s this backstory behind why that pig disappears. It’s happening in the optic nerve in the visual pathway, which can be fixed.

All right, another very common situation. I would substitute accommodation for focus the focus mechanism overview. So focus or accommodation is a dynamic process where the lens changes its shape through coordinated action of the tiny muscles called the ciliary muscles and when we are able to make that change our

Sam Berne (20:50.926)
I is able to see objects clearly at a variety of distances.

So it’s a great example when we start doing vision therapy how to fine-tune those muscles so kiddos can focus on their screen or you know at their desk and then they can focus on the the whiteboard or the chalkboard and being able to have that versatility is something that vision therapy addresses. But again, the regular eye doctor is not looking at the dynamic process of vision. He or she is looking

at the static measurement of reading the eye chart at distance. So this is another way for you to really contribute to these kids. So the ciliary muscles are right here. These little muscles right in here. This is the lens, this little purple spherical shaped. So these muscles need to work.

in order to allow the near vision and the far vision to work together. And again, I’m going to show you very specific vision therapy exercises that target the ciliary muscle and accommodation. It’s going to be great. But for now, all we’re doing is letting you know that this is why a child is having a focusing problem because they can’t change the muscles very well.

Now another thing to note the eye is mostly fluid. Okay, we have a front part which is called the aqueous humor and we have the back part which is called the vitreous the gel the gel sack. So these need to be clear fluid.

Sam Berne (22:40.046)
But a lot of times because of inflammation because of stagnation in the channels there gets to be congestion. One of the most famous congested descriptions of the vitreous are something called eye floaters. It’s my most asked question in in my social media. What can I do to get rid of eye floaters?

Or in the anterior chamber, the aqueous aqueous anterior P posterior posterior vitreous interior posterior. There are ways that you can do vision therapy exercises to clear up the fluid to reduce the inflammation and I will be teaching those to you at a later time. Another thing that happens is if the fluid begins to solidify.

What happens is a pressure can build up in the eye and that’s called glaucoma. It’s a very scary disease because it can lead the blindness and you don’t even know it. So there are again vision therapy exercises. There’s nutritional things that you can feed the eyes to help bring the eye pressure down because otherwise you’re just dealing with needles drugs and surgery. That’s all that’s

available in the allopathic world which work but there you pay the price because they’re side effects. All right. I want to

Your mom’s yeah, I mean you could you know somebody exactly. Well, the thing is is that more and more people are having these problems for a variety of reasons and I want to focus in on this this big orange part of the eye. This is the back part of the eye called the vitreous and it’s a gel sack. It’s made of a jelly like material of water and amino acids.

Sam Berne (24:43.296)
And what happens is is that over time as we age this compartment begins to shrink.

And it pulls away from the retina. call it posterior vitreous detachment over 60 % of people over the age of I think 50 or 55 get this posterior vitreous detachment. So you get flashing lights. You get sparkles. You get a lot of eye floaters and part of it is because the integrity of this compartment begins to shrink it dries out. So again,

hydration, oxygenation are so important, especially in this area to avoid the posterior vitriol detachment and or floaters because once you get the floaters, then it becomes a little harder to get rid of them. You can get rid of them, but it’s it’s definitely a tall order and

Yeah, of course you you are you the glasses are really helping you. I can imagine we reduce the prescription and you saw the immediately like this feels more relaxing. I remember you were wearing the glasses down on your nose because the prescription was way too strong for you. And so anyway the role of the vitreous body in eye stability. So that we want to keep our vitreous

We don’t want it to shrink because if we can keep it at a the same level of size, then our vision stays clear. Our retina is in place and we can focus on images. So again, you’re going to learn a variety of different ways to feed and bathe the vitreous. Okay, so now we’re going to move to eye muscles and the

Sam Berne (26:43.854)
The thing about the eye is that it has six muscles that attach to the outside part of the eye and

What I would say about the so on your test, one of the questions is going to be how many muscles are on the outside part of the eye?

So you already got that question. Another question you’re going to get is what part of the eye has floaters? Well, we already talked about the vitreous. Another question is the optic nerve carries visual impulses to the brain’s vision centers for interpretation. That’s a cool question. I’m going to ask you what part of the eye carries the impulses back to the brain. So you’re getting the questions here. Let’s go to the anatomy. So we have

The six muscles one, sorry, one, this is the one at the bottom of the eye called inferior. This is at the top. This is called superior, inferior, superior. And then this is the right eye. So this would be the outside part or the lateral.

And this would be the inside part, the medial. So inferior, superior, lateral, medial. Those muscles move the eye up and down and horizontally. Okay. So when we when we start talking about tracking exercises, those eye muscles are really important. Now, it doesn’t mean that we have to strengthen them. What it means is the brain has to have better control of them.

Sam Berne (28:29.782)
So there’s always this thing when people have problems with tracking. The parents will say, we got to strengthen the muscles. No, don’t have to. Their muscles are very strong. We just have to learn to control them and aim them better. And that’s what vision therapy does really, really well.

So I’ve labeled the four muscles superior rectus, inferior rectus, lateral rectus, medial rectus. So those are the four muscles that attach to the eyeball. And then we have two more called the inferior oblique. So this little curve here, inferior, which is below or underneath and superior on top. And this is superior oblique. So the obliques

Rotate the eye. Okay, the rectus muscles move the eyes up and down and left and right. That’s going to be on your test. And so basically what happens is that a child doesn’t understand how to track their eyes. So when we do tracking exercises, we’re working on the rectus muscles or the oblique muscles. Now, one of the issues that happens

If you see this picture of this young girl, she’s got right eye turning in. Esotropia right eye esotropia. Now when we see an eye turning in like that, the child is seeing two things possibly two choices. She’s got the first is double vision. So I see two of things or the optic nerve and the visual pathway have shut down that right eye. That’s called visual suppression. So those are the two

options that the brain and the child are going to to manifest. So in this particular case, it could be the lateral rectus muscle. The muscle on the outside is overworking and the medial rectus muscle. The inner muscle there is under working. Okay. Now sometimes with these muscle movements and actions.

Sam Berne (30:44.812)
What we need to do is we need to work on two different types of movements. The pursuits are the smooth movement. So if you use my fingers, that’s smooth. That’s pursuits. That’s like for reading. And then the second part are called saccades where we’re jumping. I’m jumping my two eyes to different places. So we need to be able to have both of those coordinated movements and our eye muscles have to be working that way.

In the functional vision screening that I’m going to teach you next time, we’re going to go over the different kinds of eye movements and how to measure them and how to grade them. And it’s a it’s a really excellent way to begin to see changes in not only a child’s eye movements, but their performance because if you improve their tracking skills, their reading is going to get better. Their writing is going to get better. Their sports is going to get better.

And you’re going to look like a rock star like wow. How did the parents are going to love you because you are doing something to teach that skill so that they can track both eyes together. So we’ve got that kind of situation the pursuits in the sink saccades and then the second kind of movement is similar to what we’re doing with the Brock string, which I know you’re using which is both eyes are moving either

close, which is convergence or they’re moving parallel or even slightly apart. That’s called divergence. So we’ve got two sets of movements here. We’ve got the tracking and then we’ve got the virgins convergence divergence. They’re different movements and different skills that we have to teach. So when we teach them

And we do it through vision therapy and the child goes through the exercises on a daily basis. We start to see improvements not only in the eye movements, but the virgins movements. And then a lot of things change around their processing of information, their engagement, their movement, their mood, their confidence, they’re getting along with their siblings or others.

Sam Berne (33:06.06)
their ability to do many, many things and problem solve. So it’s a huge influence on learning as you work with these eye movements and virgins movements. Now, we’re not going to get into this and in this lecture, but one of the best ways to initially work with eye movements and virgins movements is working on the primitive reflexes. Maybe you’ve seen this. don’t know.

I know whenever I start the primitive reflex movements, what I’ll notice in a few weeks is the eye movements get better and I’m not doing any vision therapy in the tracking. There’s something about working with the primitive reflexes. You’re shaking your head. Yes, that has an effect on these specific muscles. It’s magic. It’s amazing. I know you’ve experienced it and I’m going to teach it more.

Sam Berne (34:05.87)
You said don’t do it for extended period of time. Well, it’s easier doing that way. I mean, is that helping it more than just or is it the reflex itself? I think it’s probably a combination but the reflex itself because where it originates in the brain the survival brain you are you are calming that part of the brain down so that they can have better body control on a specific muscle level. So I’m not against eye patching. I just think that

What I have found is short-term patching. It makes much more sense to the child than long-term patching. So I’m going to come to this slide. See this child here. This was one of my patients that came to see me and they were patching this child eight hours a day. And what was happening was the eye that which was the strong eye, the left eye, which is patched.

that began to develop laziness. That was the strong eye. But because it was patched for so long that I became weak and it really didn’t have an impact on this. I also this was a very strong farsighted prescription. So we took the lenses off the child and we stopped the patching and what we noticed was that the visual engagement was so much better the

The balancing the hopping the motor skills got better. The auditory processing got so much better. In fact, the occupational therapist tried an experiment by taking the glasses off in the eye patch off and she was doing specific auditory processing therapy with the child and she found that with the glasses off in the eye patch off the auditory processing was so much better and that was a signal that she had to refer

The child to me because the prescription that the child was in was much too strong and the eye patching wasn’t working. So when you’re doing eye patching, it needs to be done in my opinion equally and for short intervals. And so whatever you’re doing do it equally because what will happen like in this case and this has happened thousands of times the so-called good eye starts to become the bad eye.

Sam Berne (36:32.91)
starts to become the lazy eye and that’s the last thing you want to create. Also this child emotionally and energetically was really shut down. We had to do a lot of craniosacral therapy and color therapy because she was traumatized from why do I have to wear this patch? You know, it was a fight with the parents. There was no reason why she should wear that eye patch. Now again, when

We can do the saccadic movements of the pursuit movements with each eye separately, which we did do some of that, but the full-time patching eight hours a day. We stopped that because it just wasn’t working. I don’t want to talk just for a moment about eye muscles and nerves because there are nerves that go to the muscles that stimulate them. We call these cranial nerves and there are three main cranial nerves that

affect the eye muscles. There’s cranial nerve 3 which affects the rectus muscles. There’s cranial nerve 4 which affects the oblique muscles and there’s cranial nerve 6 which affects the lateral and the medial rectus muscles. What I put here is some of the muscles that what they do. So the levator is the main muscle that

that pulls the eyelid up. Sometimes we have people with a with what we call a ptosis or the lid is kind of just lagging down. And so by improving this muscle here, we can stop that eyelid blocking the eye. The superior rectus moves the muscle up. Medial rectus moves it towards the nose. We talk about functional dynamic anatomy. It involves

these different components and I talk about the cornea the tears I talk about dynamic function adjusting the lens. So it’s just another thing that you can read and again, you’ll have it in your when you get the PDF of

Sam Berne (38:56.216)
There we go. And so I’ve put a couple of articles in here, a couple of articles one on strabismus. So when you work with crossed eyes or uncrossed eyes, you see, you probably know this, but when a doctor sees a child with an eye that’s crossing or uncrossing like wandering out, the first thing they think of is doing eye muscle surgery.

Sam Berne (39:27.246)
Okay, they they want to do eye muscle surgery. And when you do eye muscle surgery for the rest of that person’s life, they are going to be insecure and they’re not going to trust their vision. Because when you change the length of the muscle in the eye, you know, I showed you those six muscles. You haven’t told the brain anything. So the brain

is like, okay, you’ve done something here. I don’t really know what you’ve done. The brain is now talking. So I don’t know what to do. I’m going to go back to the way it was before the surgery. And this is why the success rate of eye muscle surgery is so low because they have to do multiple surgeries. The more surgeries, the more confusion, the more scar tissue. Now, what I can say is in your

geographical area. I’m not going to name it but in your geographical area, they probably do a lot of eye muscle surgeries. And so if you get a child and you get a family like that, I’m going to counsel you on how to talk to the parents. So they’re not freaking out. So they’re not scared into doing some invasive surgery like this and vision therapy works in

incredibly well to teach a person how to keep their eyes straight and it’s an organic Learning like I’ve learned how to use my two eyes together. I don’t need that surgery that surgery is treating a symptom because the eyes may look straight for a while, but they’re not going to function any differently. So strabismus when you’re doing vision therapy for strabismus, it’s a long lasting

result. Okay. Now, I also wrote an article about the optic nerve and we talked about, you know, suppression visual suppression. It’s like when you do those red green charts and reds over the right eye and green is over the left eye and you’re doing the red green and you go to you. I can’t see the green very well. I think this was with your kids even that’s the brain and the optic nerve shutting on off and so

Sam Berne (41:51.502)
There are vision therapy exercises that stimulate that so that you stop the suppression. And then the last thing is on how to keep the eyelids healthy. Probably down the road. You’re going to get a question on, know, I’ve got inflammation here. I’ve been using steroids or other nasty pharmaceuticals. What can be done like herbal compresses or eye massage to keep the eyelids healthy?

fact, today I did a class on our membership on how to keep the eyelids healthy and it was all about putting sound into the eyelids to open up the circulation and it works very very well. So you’ll have those articles and I didn’t put any videos in it. I may send you some but I think it’s enough. So wrapping up.

This has been an introduction to the anatomy of the eye, especially the functional aspect of the eye and how that eye brain body connection and the structure and the function. We’re looking at all these different layers the structure and function of the cornea the retina the lens the pupil the iris the optic nerve. Remember function if we know the function we can apply vision therapy.

to change the performance and that’s that’s really the basis here. Iris and pupil lens and accommodation retina and photoreceptors optic nerve and transmission the fluid of the eye the aqueous and the vitreous body the eye movements and there you go. So in terms of the questions that I’m going to ask you on the test. What is functional dynamic and anatomy?

Can you describe what it is? What is the iris control? Well, controls the size of the pupil which regulates the amount of light entering. The iris also shows us genetic tendencies and nurture points. What is the white part of the eye called? It’s called the sclera. What’s the function? It’s responsible for I’m sorry.

Sam Berne (44:09.166)
So now we talk about the lens of the eye. The function of the lens is responsible for focusing light on the retina and also for a combination the retina the structure. It’s a multi-layered sensory tissue lining the back of the eye. What’s it made of rods and cones? What does the optic nerve do? It carries visual impulses to the brain’s vision centers. So you have the questions.

When we do the written exam and there might be a little essay, but you’ll have those what what I want to emphasize in the anatomy is that you don’t have to memorize every little thing, but just to know that we’re working on functional anatomy so we can change the performance and in some cases the function when we change the function the structure gets better. I’ll give you an example.

somebody that has a cataract. If we start improving the circulation in the eye through exercises, sometimes the cataract will reverse or go away. So the function, if we change the function, the structure changes. So that’s a very powerful idea that function can change structure, but it can not only in the eye, but in the whole body. If we change the way we use something in the body, it’s going to change the anatomy.

And so that’s why just doing repetitive movements. That’s all we do. Eventually, there’s going to break be a breakdown in the structure. That’s why we have to do a versatility of a variety of movements outside the box. That’s what vision therapy is so good for because whatever you’re doing in vision therapy is out of the box. It’s something that the person is not normally doing. So you’re going to get results. You’re going to get improvements.

Because just giving them a little bit is going to make a huge change in how they see how they process how they move how they balance how they think how they problem solve even if there’s a developmental delay or you know brain injury or even you know kids like with Down syndrome and autism when you apply vision therapy you are contributing something new to the brain and the eyes and this is going to change everything. It’s kind of like a ripple effect.