Vision: Our dominant Sense

Vision is our dominant sense

Most often we think of vision in terms of visual acuity: the ability to see letters on a chart. That is a part of vision, but is not the whole thing. Vision is the process of deriving meaning from what is seen. It is a complex, learned and developed set of functions that involve a multitude of skills. About 80% of what we learn from the world around us is due to perception, learning, cognition and activities are mediated through vision. The ultimate purpose of the vision is then to act on what we see and respond to that either with our muscles or through cognitive response (understanding).

People who have suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury often (more than 50%) have visual and visual-cognitive disorders. The majority of individuals that recover from a traumatic brain injury will have binocular function difficulties in the form of strabismus, phoria, oculomotor dysfunction, convergence and accommodative abnormalities.

The process of vision can be broken down into three general categories;

1. visual acuity and visual field,
2. visual motor abilities and
3. visual perception.