At the University of Oregon, this is a new discovery, to us, this is
called Behaviorial Optometry. Very often a child's difficulty in
focusing is a visual, developmental issue that is easily treated with
vision therapy. The earlier it is caught and treated the better.
There is a diminishing return the older you get. Seven or eight is
a prime age, sixteen is getting old.
There are two people in Jerusalem who practice this who are world
class. One is Dr. Chaim Slomivic (5666 029) and Dr. Robert
Lederman. I have a lot of firsthand contact with Dr. Slomivic and
every one of the dozens of students that I have sent there have seen
a profound improvement. I have heard from someone who I trust that
is also in the field that Lederman is just as good.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060816012419.htm

Unusual Data On Rapid Eye Movements Shed New Light On Brain And
Inhibiting Behavior

When a child has a problem focusing or acts too quickly with
inappropriate behavior, it's enough to drive adults nuts. Thanks to a
closer look at unexpected data, University of Oregon researchers may
have tapped into a developmentally based explanation for why kids
respond as they do.

A study of eye movements of 41 individuals, ages 4 to 29 and divided
into four age groups, led to the discovery that younger people simply
don't have the ability to ignore secondary targets, even when told in
advance, said Paul van Donkelaar in a presentation today at the Brain
& Mind Research Symposium of the Association of Pacific Rim
Universities in Sydney, Australia.

Van Donkelaar, a professor of human physiology and researcher in the
University of Oregon's Institute of Neuroscience, said his team
probably was seeing a lack of communication between the frontal
cortex and brain stem. "We think the inability to inhibit behavior
has to do with the development of the frontal cortex and its ability
to tell the rest of the brain to do or not to do something," he said.

The frontal cortex is known to play a role in such things as impulse
control, motor function, problem-solving and socialized behavior. The
brain stem controls basic activity, such as keeping the heart beating
and the lungs breathing.

The research, as yet unpublished, is part of a larger project funded
through a grant from the National Institutes of Health to van
Donkelaar and colleague Marjorie Woollacott. They are studying the
interaction of postural control and proficiency in daily living
skills, particularly among youngsters with cerebral palsy. In this
case, the researchers began looking at how healthy children orient
toward an object of interest through eye movements alone.

The study took an unexpected twist when doctoral student Sandy
Saavedra reported a high level of multiple saccades, which are
rapidly occurring glances toward a secondary object, van Donkelaar
said. "My initial reaction was to just throw them out," he said. "In
adult studies there are so few multiple saccades that they are
statistically insignificant, maybe just 5 percent of the time and
attributed to mistakes by the participants. But in these results, we
were seeing multiple saccades in 25 percent of the trials. It was a
complete surprise. So we started asking what was happening and what
it means."

Looking at and comparing the four age groups let the researchers
recognize a trend. The 4- to 6-year-old children had difficulty
stopping themselves from looking at a secondary object placed into
their peripheral vision. They also initiated multiple saccades at a
rapid pace and in much higher levels than adults, and did so 150
milliseconds sooner than adults, "which in brain time is an
eternity," van Donkelaar said.

"In the 4-to-6-year-old and the 7-to-9-year-old groups, there was a
similar relationship. The younger kids had a lot of trouble keeping
their eyes fixated on the original target, but that problem was much
more muted in the 7- to 9-year olds," he said.

The data appear to be tapping into the relationship between the
frontal cortex, where decision-making skills develop, and how a
decision influences the brain stem that controls eye movements, van
Donkelaar said. "What we think is happening is that these multiple
saccade trials are initiated so quickly that the frontal cortex isn't
playing much of a role in the signaling of the brain stems in younger
children," he said.

So how do the new findings fit into the group's overall research? It
is believed that for cerebral palsy patients the development of the
cortex will be delayed well beyond childhood. Thus eye movements and
focusing along with other components involved in motor control may
explain why it's more difficult for a cerebral palsy patient than a
healthy adult to successfully pick up an object and manipulate it.
Simply put, the cortex isn't fully participating in the game.