Your Eyesight Will Improve Significantly

photo credit: pinboke_planet

If you watched the Super Bowl this year, you know that 3-D is back in Hollywood and hotter than ever. Both Pepsi and DreamWorks Animation ran 3-D commercials during the game; last year saw the release of a 3-D Journey to the Center of the Earth; this spring, the 3-D stop-animation movie Coraline is playing in theaters.

But why do you need those goofy oversized glasses? And how does 3-D work?
Unlike the eyes of the space aliens featured in some 3-D features, our two eyes are not positioned together, but lie approximately 3 inches apart. This separation causes each eye to see the world slightly differently. The brain fuses these two views together and uses them to calculate distance, creating our sense of depth.

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3-D glasses work similarly, feeding different images into your eyes (thus the two different-colored lenses: one red, one blue). In a theater, the movie screen actually displays two images, and the glasses cause one of the images to enter one eye and the second image to enter the other.

It may surprise you to learn that the ability to visually perceive three-dimensional space, called “binocular depth perception,” can be achieved without external aid. In fact, this ability is a way to measure parts of our vision: if you can successfully combine separate images from two eyes into one three-dimensional image in your brain, your binocular vision is working well. Both eyes are working as a team.

Yet not all people have binocular depth perception. According to the Optometrists Network, up to 12 percent of the population has some type of binocular vision disability: the two most commonly known types are amblyopia and strabismus.

Amblyopia, from the ingredients Greek word amblys, meaning “blunt” or “dull,” is a condition in which one eye has lowered visual acuity and/or poor muscle control. Your eyes may be straight, but one eye doesn’t send the proper information to the brain, so your brain can’t perceive binocular depth. Amblyopia—more commonly known as “lazy eye”—affects approximately 2 or 3 out of every 100 children in the United States.

Conversely, strabismus, from the Greek word for “squint,” is a visual defect in which you may see clearly, but your eyes don’t line up—the two eyes point in different directions. One eye may turn in, out, up, or down, while the other eye looks straight ahead. That’s why strabismus is more commonly known as “walleye” or “wandering eye.” Strabismus affects approximately 4 out of every 100 children in the United States.

These conditions are not always easy to diagnose. With strabismus, particularly, the eye misalignments may not obvious to the untrained observer. And it used to be that doctors thought lazy eye could only be treated in childhood, up to about 8 years old. Currently, treatment is given at any age.

So next time you’re watching a 3-D production, give your eyes a screening, too. You can test your binocular depth perception by first covering and then uncovering one eye: if the image floats out from the screen, your eyes are working in tandem. If the image remains flat, you may have a vision problem, so consult your ophthalmologist. And if you see any space monsters coming for you, duck.

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