Not Easy Going Through Life With A Squint!

The human eye is like an auto-focus camera. In fact, it has been described as the most perfect camera ever designed....capable of amazing functions. It has also been defined as the window to the body.....

BRIEF ANALOGY
Shutters....Iris. Aperture....Pupil. Lens....Eye lens. (Screen)....Film.....Retina. Autofocus mechanism.....Ciliary body. Camera case....Eyelids. Colour and Night vision assembly.....Rods and cones of the retina.....working along with aperture regulation!

Continued......
Needless restating that humans have two eyes....ditto two cameras.

Ordinarily, such two cameras are supposed to function separately to form two separate images of same objects within their lines of view.... But in humans, both images are synchronized into one....complete in plane and depth!

Such synchronized vision brings images formed in both retinas into a wonderful blend as both eyes complement each other in binocular vision....a phenomenon found in man, other primates, and other animals whose eyes are frontally placed like the owl.

This is binocular vision.
Two eyes working together also comes with an added advantage of a wider field of vison.

But there are situations in which this synchrony is in disarray. This is Squint or Crossed Eyes.

Called Strabysmus in medical parlance, squint is a medical condition typified by non- alignment of vision in both eyes that are otherwise supposed to work in tandem.

The sufferer thus sees two different images from the different eyes thus resulting in double vision. He soon learns to shut out the image in one eye....akin to blinding out that eye! More like the "blind" eye now converted into a living prosthesis....you'd say. And that's exactly what it is....practically useless!

As the sufferer is thus divested of binocular vision, he does not enjoy the added benefits of wide field, wide plane and depth that you and I enjoy.

The cosmetic burden is equally huge...as crossed eyes are not the most appealing of physical features. Many a prospective spouse has been lost due to such physical minus. And the psychological outlay....as fellow kids jeer at them using names like "shinkoro". Adults derogatorily refer to them as "awobadanbienwoyo"....

Imagine going through a life of academics with just one functioning eye.

My heart goes out this glorious morning to people with crossed eyes....

POST SCRIPT FOR THE MEDICALLY-INCLINED...
In an earlier article on stroke, I used the term "decussation"....meaning a cross-over of nerve fibres from one side of the body to the other.

The same applies to nerve fibres in the Optic Nerve shortly after "leaving" the eyeball as they meet at a point called the Optic Chiasma from which some fibres actually cross-over while others continue on the side of the body from which they had set forth ab initio.

At this point, there is apparent redivision of the "parent" nerve into the Optic Tracts. So while each optic nerve contains nerve fibres from only one eye, an optic tract say on the right, contains fibres from both eyes.

There is also the main modulation cum synchrony of images from both eyes in the brain to form one seamless image.

But errors in these parts are not responsible for squint.

Squint is due to partial or total paralysis of some extra-ocular muscles....(those tiny muscles that anchor the eyeball to the hollow concavity in the skull where they sit)....called the orbit.

Such muscles move the eyeballs....up, down, left, right....together in a seamless fashion......

Paralysis of some such muscles apparently lets one eye "drag after" the other....as the person makes to look sideways. The eyes now look in different directions.....resulting in double vision.

FOR DOCTORS.
EOM Nv Supply....CN III....
Exceptions.....LR6SO4...
Surgical remedy for squint where applicable must be instituted early.....

Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.

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Articles by Tosin Akindele