A world-renowned Ph.D. opens up to give us the inside line on brain plasticity + sight recovery technology
sight recovery technology and brain plasticity. Those are the uniquely critical areas of focus for Ione Fine, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Washington.
Dr. Fine will be sharing many of her revealing findings during her keynote address at the 13th Annual Envision Conference, scheduled for Aug. 22-25 in Wichita, KS. The conference brings clinicians and researchers together, and also brings fresh research to the forefront.
For more information: envisionus.com/events/envision-conference .
Dr. Fine recently spoke with EB about everything from visual processing and the process of interpretation to retinal prostheses.
EB: You have a background in both psychology and visual processing. Can you tell us about this specialty?
IF: I’m interested in how the signal that reaches the retina—which is where optometrists and ophthalmologists stop—is interpreted by the brain. We all know this is a process of interpretation, and I’m interested in what happens in that process, and when it helps, hinders, or changes.
EB: How does this tie into blindness, which is a focus at Envision?
IF: In the extreme case of when people are blind and that input is gone, what does the brain then do to interpret the world around it? Also, what happens with people and prostheses where we know that the input is really distorted? This is my niche.
EB: Tell us more about the processing of visual information.
IF: There are some aspects of the visual system that are very good at learning, are very plastic, and can change very fast. So, our ability to recognize objects that change over a long period of time—like faces—is very flexible.
But our ability to interpret things like lines and bars and edges we learn very early in life, and after that it’s done. That is why amblyopia, for example, is such a problem. [My research has] shown that different parts of processing visual information have different windows of plasticity.
EB: What about sight restoration? What is promising in that area?
IF: It’s amazing that we are now in a time where this is seen as something that is worth putting investment into. Until Second Sight (with their retinal implant), the field had really been kind of static for 20 years. It was like the third rail of science…you were crazy if you tried to do it. Now, multiple groups are working on it.
EB: What role can optometry play?
IF: You need to ask, “How can I train them to do this task in a different way?” You can’t make the vision better, but you can help patients make better use of their vision. We need to give them better tools. 
2 Low Vision Resources
In the United States, there are approximately 1 million people who are blind and 4 million who have low vision.
Wondering how to get involved to help this population? Here, two key resources:
Lighthouse Guild, in partnership with the American Occupational Therapy Association, is offering a two-hour online program designed for occupational therapists (including optometrists and staff). The course, titled “Low Vision Assessment for Occupational Therapy,” demonstrates the basic strategies and tools for assessing vision loss and addressing vision impairments. lighthouseguild.org/ce/elearning .
Also from the Lighthouse Guild comes an initiative with Palm Beach Libraries to provide annual memberships to Bookshare for Palm Beach County (FL) residents who have vision impairment. Bookshare, a Benetech initiative, is the world’s largest online library for people who read differently due to blindness, low vision, a physical disability, or dyslexia.
Learn more at bookshare.org .
—Stephanie K. De Long
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