Behavioural Optometry

Behavioural vision care is an expanded area of optometric practice. Eyesight is the ability to see something clearly and involves using the centre of the retina known as the fovea (being able to read the bottom line of the eye test chart). Vision goes beyond eyesight and is the understanding of what is seen and involves the peripheral retina. Vision involves the ability to take incoming visual information, process that information and obtain meaning from it.

How is behavioural optometry different from regular optometry?

Regular optometry is testing for central detailed vision whereas behavioural optometry encompasses the whole retina. The retina itself develops from brain tissue and is part of the central nervous system

Vision is also connected to our balance system.

To maintain balance we must integrate information from the visual (eyes), proprioceptive (information perceived through our muscles and joints to tell us where we are in space) and vestibular (inner ears sensing motion, equilibrium and spatial awareness) systems. If any one of these systems is not working well, then, the other systems also decline so all the systems can work together, but now inefficiently and not at it’s optimum functional level.

This intimate relationship between the balance and vision begins at birth. It is this system that guides our balance, which in turn guides the development of our vision during our first years.