Your forward-facing, binocular vision allows you advantages such as depth perception and the ability to distinguish acute detail in images before you. Your brain and your eyes work together in both conscious and unconscious ways, actively processing information from the things you see while utilizing some aspects of your vision to aid your eye-hand coordination and sense of balance. In both types of eye-brain interaction, many exercises can improve your visual and mental processes.
Perception Exercises
Visual discrimination exercises allow the brain to take in two or more superficially similar images and discern slight, subtle differences between them. Basic visual discrimination occurs whenever you read. It is the process that allows you to determine the difference between written words, and to spot misspellings and grammatical errors. A popular style of video game that you may have played in a bar or restaurant requires you to find differences between two similar complex images. These types of exercises encourage the visual centers of your brain to process detailed information quickly, and to direct your eyes to make short, concentrated comparisons of many successive details.
Visual Memory and Understanding Exercises
Visual memory exercises focus on the brain's ability to recall details. Memory games, in which illustrated cards are arranged face down and viewed two at a time, require the brain to process and store the locations of specific cards. By remembering where you have seen a particular image, you can quickly pair it with its matching image when you find it on another card.
A similar memory exercise requires you to view a complex picture for a given amount of time and then recall as many details of that image as you can affter it is removed from view. This exercise utilizes the same directive, concentrated visual scanning techniques as the perception exercises above, but uses them differently. Instead of scanning for differences between images, your brain must commit as many details as possible from a single image to memory.
Visual Motor Coordination Exercises
In these exercises, the brain's ability to take advantage of peripheral vision is utilized. According to EyeCanLearn.com, roughly 20 percent of the visual information your eyes gather is not processed by the visual cortex of the brain. Instead, this peripheral vision is processed by the brain's motor sensors, which aid in balance and coordination.
Exercises which stimulate the brain's use of information from your peripheral vision include those in which a single shape or image is displayed directly before you. You focus on this image while several images, including one that matches this one, are displayed to the sides of it. Using your visual cortex to process the information normally only used unconsciously for movement and coordination, you keep your eyes focused on the central image while you point to its matching image in your peripheral vision.
Refinement of your brain's ability to process information from the edge of your visual range is integral to your ability to read. As your eyes focus on the word you are currently reading, your peripheral vision informs your brain of the next spot on which to focus your eyes.
Another exercise that makes use of your peripheral vision is that of simply following a moving object with your eyes. Keeping your head still, follow a slow-moving finger or other focal point as it moves around in front of you. Refinement of this skill aids you in physical activities such as sports, in which you must catch or compensate for the movements of a ball or other players.
