How The Eye Works

The question as to how the eye works can be broken to two sub-questions:

1. How the eye converts the focused images of light to the nerve signals to be transmitted to the brain.

2. How the eye manages to generate the focused images of light always on the retina even if the distance of the light source keeps changing with time, i.e., the theory of accommodation.

The first question first:

As light falls on the eye, it gets bent through the refractive medium comprising the cornea, the aqueous humor, the lens, and the vitrious humor to get focused on the retina, comprising rods (sensing brightness) and cones (sensing hue).

Light turns the photosensitive chemical rhodopsin in the rods into activated rhodopsin causing electrical impulses, that are taken by the optic nerve to the brain; and there, they get interpreted as light again.

Activated rhodopsin changes back to photosensitive rhodopsin with the help of 11-cis-retinal - derived from vitamin A. That is how the eye works electro-chemically and that is why a lack of vitamin A causes vision problems.

Now the second question:

This is the most controversial question, never satisfactorily answered by the mainstream ophthalmology when raised doubts against its accepted theory of accommodation by the famous American ophthalmologist Dr. W.H.Bates.

I'll better reproduce his own words in this controversial matter of which he was a master by dint of his in-depth work on thousands of eyes including those of animal too, mammals and fish alike:

'The power of the eye to change its focus for vision at different distances has puzzled the scientific mind ever since Kepler tried to explain it by supposing a change in the position of the crystalline lens.'

'Later on every imaginable hypothesis was advanced to account for it. The idea of Kepler had many supporters.'

'So also had the idea that the change of focus was effected by a lengthening of the eyeball.'

'Some believed that the contractive power of the pupil was sufficient to account for the phenomenon, until the fact was established, by the operation for the removal of the iris, that the eye accommodated perfectly without this part of the visual mechanism.'

'Some, dissatisfied with all these theories, discarded them all, and boldly asserted that no change of focus took place, a view which was conclusively disproven when the invention of the ophthalmoscope made it possible to see the interior of the eye.'

'The idea that the change of focus might be brought about by a change in the form of the lens appears to have been first advanced, according to Landolt, by the Jesuit, Scheiner (1619). Later it was put forward by Descartes (1637).'

'But the first definite evidence in support of the theory was presented by Dr. Thomas Young in a paper read before the Royal Society in 1800. "He adduced reasons," says Donders, "which, properly understood, should be taken as positive proofs."'

'I have been studying the refraction of the human eye for more than thirty years, and my observations fully confirm the foregoing conclusions as to the uselessness of all the methods heretofore employed for the prevention and treatment of errors of refraction. I was very early led to suspect, however, that the problem was by no means an unsolvable one.'

'Examining 30,000 pairs of eyes a year at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary and other institutions, I observed many cases in which errors of refraction either recovered spontaneously, or changed their form, and I was unable either to ignore them, or to satisfy myself with the orthodox explanations, even where such explanations were available.'

'It seemed to me that if a statement is a truth it must always be a truth. There can be no exceptions.'

'If errors of refraction are incurable, they should not recover, or change their form, spontaneously.'

How The Eye Works: Normal and Abnormal

Diagram of the Hyperopic, Emmetropic and Myopic Eyeballs

H, hyperopia; E, emmetropia; M, myopia; Ax, optic axis. Note that in hyperopia and myopia the rays, instead of coming to a focus, form a round spot upon the retina.

'In seeking for light upon these problems I examined tens of thousands of eyes, and the more facts I accumulated the more difficult it became to reconcile them with the accepted views.'

'Finally, about half a dozen years ago, I undertook a series of observations upon the eyes of human beings and the lower animals the results of which convinced both myself and others that the lens is not a factor in accommodation, and that the adjustment necessary for vision at different distances is affected in the eye, precisely as it is in the camera, by a change in the length of the organ, this alteration being brought about by the action of the muscles on the outside of the globe.'

'Equally convincing was the demonstration that errors of refraction, including presbyopia, are due, not to an organic change in the shape of the eyeball, or in the constitution of the lens, but to a functional and therefore curable derangement in the action of the extrinsic muscles.'

This was the insight of Bates that made my work - regarding how the eye works, and why the eye doesn't work properly when it doesn't - easier and I could search for physical methods that changed the length of the eyeball at will.

What a power in one's hands! How the eye works, depends on how the body works in a one to one way!

Bates had strayed toward mind. How the eye works, depends on how the mind works - he said; which could never turn into a one to one way, since mind is such an abstract entity!

Body is not. Body is concrete. It follows physical laws which can be tested in a laboratory each and every time an experiment is performed. Mind is more abstract and less predictive. That's why Bates couldn't assert his results, as to how the eye works, everytime in a laboratory setting.

Today we can do it. Each and every time in my work, I can show the right way as to how the eye works. That means 100% results for the method of treatment for myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, and presbyopia?!

Exactly. Immediately. Right then. There.

'That is why the eye isn't working' and 'that is how the eye works' - just becomes crystal clear.

And that's what vision therapy does to the eye that doesn't see right. It simply tells it how the eye works.

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