- A subset of neuro-optometric rehabilitation
- The process of improving visual skills and abilities through exercises conducted at home and at an office supervised by a vision therapist or optometrist
- Typically assists with developmental visual impairments
- Three major types: orthoptics, behavioral vision therapy, and vision therapy for nearsightedness correction

Optometric Vision Therapy

- Process of helping restore visual defects due to brain trauma
- Rehabilitation for motor, visual, and perceptive disorders through various exercises led by a trained optometrist
- Helps identify impairments caused by brain trauma that may not be easily diagnosed by a simple optometry exam 
- A subset of neuro-optometric rehabilitation is optometric vision therapy

University of Colorado at Boulder

- Neuro-optometric rehabilitation therapy
- Corrective lenses
- Syntonic phototherapy
- Eye muscle surgery

Treatments for Visual Impairments

What is neuro-optometric rehabilitation? Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation Association. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2022, from https://noravisionrehab.org/patients-caregivers/what-is-neuro-optometric-rehabilitation 

What is neuro-optometric rehabilitation?

Neuro-optometric rehabilitation therapy

- Devices that help individuals see clearer
- Usually associated with impairments that occur directly on the eye, rather than neurological causes
- Recently, a lot of research has been conducted on whether eyesight in children and adolescents has decreased by examining percents of the population with corrective lenses and eyewear (with the largest percent being 32.1%)
- Different types of lenses can be used to help with different visual impairments. For example, colored lenses can help ease the symptoms of photophobia caused by brain injury

Corrective Lenses

- Phototherapy: the use of light to treat different conditions
- Syntonic phototherapy is specific light therapies that help treat visual impairments, particularly those involved with various neurological conditions (migraines, mood and learning disorders, ocular movement inability) 
- The eye is the only place where blood can interact with light, therefore, various light signals to blood in the eyes can help relax the blood vessels from the eye to various parts of the body (particularly the brain)
- Originated before World War II, but modern technologies have been helping develop this therapy a lot more
- Different colors help with different impairments (blue and violet stimulate the parasympathetic system, while red, orange, and yellow stimulate the sympathetic system), however, these are most effective when used in combination with other treatments

Syntonic phototherapy

- Specific surgery done to correct extreme cases of eye wiggling, known as nystagmus, and eye misalignment, known as strabismus
- General procedure: realigning one eye to the other eye
- Typically done with children (due to the critical periods of vision)

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