An extreme case of lazy eye (amblyopia) can result in stereoblindness, which makes an individual unable to respond to binocular depth cues and forces them to rely heavily on monocular depth cues instead of experiencing a full appreciation of the three-dimensional nature of the world.

Lazy Eye as a Cause of Stereoblindness

Neuroscientist Bruce Bridgeman, who was stereoblind from birth, suddenly gained the ability to perceive depth in 3-D for the first time in 2012. Experts hypothesize that this remarkable recovery was possible because a fleeting moment of binocular vision during his early development preserved the necessary neural cells. These cells, which respond to binocular cues, likely remained dormant until they were finally activated decades later.

Case Study: Bruce Bridgeman's Vision Recovery and its Neurological Hypothesis

- Also known as lazy eye
- When eyes are misaligned in the first few years of life, one eye becomes functionally blind
- Primary visual cortex surpasses information from one eye
- Can be treated with surgery on the eye muscles, eye training, or through use of eye patches


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University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

Accommodation is the process where ciliary muscles contract to help the lens focus on an image. The lens rounds and flattens to adjust to the distance between the eye and object.
- The lens rounds to focus on near objects
- The lnes flattens to focus on far objects

Accommodation

Breedlove, S. & Watson, N. (2017). Behavioral neuroscience, eighth edition. Oxford University Press.

Behavioral Neuroscience 8th Edition

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

- Also known as nearsightedness
- Caused by the eyeball being too long
- The eye focuses the images in front of the retina, instead of on the retina
- Can be corrected with a concave lens, to scatter light before it hits the lens and allow it to be focused onto the retina

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