Eleven-year-old Dylan had been wearing his Mind-Eye brain glasses for only five months yet started “reading at the level where he should be reading, comprehending what he should be comprehending, and calming himself down before he became overwhelmingly frustrated,” says Dylan’s mother, Jackie, who resides with her husband and son in the Chicago area. “Math is still a challenge, but Dylan is getting it.”

Even more amazing to Jackie is Dylan’s newly discovered sense of time. “I asked my son recently about the junior high choir presentation at school, and he tells me it was ‘really good; it went from 11:30 to 12:40 and then we had math.’ I was floored,” Jackie recalls. “Until then, my son had never been aware of time or span of time – what precedes something and what follows it. For him, five minutes meant anything from five seconds to five hours. I credit his [Mind-Eye] glasses [for the changes in him].”

A pair of glasses able to achieve all this? Indeed! They are special brain glasses uniquely prescribed by the Mind-Eye team to lessen symptoms of Dylan’s diagnosed ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). In his case, the ADHD was causing a disconnect between his eyes and ears and skewing his awareness and understanding of the world around him, Dr. Zelinsky told Jackie.

Based in Northbrook, Ill., the Mind-Eye Institute has achieved worldwide recognition for the use of therapeutic eyeglasses, lenses, prisms, and filters to vary the amount, intensity and angle of light that passes through the retina. The retina is part of the central nervous system and a primary portal through which information enters the brain in the form of light-generated electrical signals.

“By manipulating light with eyeglasses, we are often able to reduce symptoms and restore comfort to patients needing to rebuild visual processing skills compromised by brain injury, head trauma, stroke, and other neurological disorders,” says Deborah Zelinsky OD, founder and executive research director of the Mind-Eye Institute. “Our unique optometric testing, scientific-based approaches, and advanced visual skill-building also help develop new processing capabilities in patients – children and adults — with attention and other learning deficiencies.”

Jackie recalls being initially “very skeptical” about Mind-Eye. “Patients were calling the brain glasses ‘magic glasses’ and immediately I start thinking this all sounds like a bunch of hocus-pocus hooey.” But she called, anyway, to make Dylan an appointment, following the recommendation of an educational consultant who had reviewed earlier results of neuropsychologic testing of Dylan.

“I began talking to Dr. Zelinsky and learned that the work of the Mind-Eye Institute is all based in neuroscience. I realized my first impressions about Mind-Eye had been all wrong. I was not being told this is something that might or might not work,” says Jackie. “Dr. Zelinsky was saying here is the number where your child is at, here is the number where your child should be, and we have glasses that can take Dylan from point A to point B.

“I am so impressed by her,” Jackie adds. “Every time I am with Dr. Zelinsky she is telling me something new about my child.”

“Children who have trouble developing basic reading skills, cannot remember what they are reading or what is read to them, fumble when reading aloud, unnecessarily fidget, or exhibit difficulties focusing and concentrating may require more than an eye examination to check eye health and the clarity of their eyesight,” Dr. Zelinsky explains. “They might have underdeveloped visual skills. Perhaps, their central and peripheral eyesight are not interacting appropriately and/or their eyesight and listening abilities are uncoordinated or they have trouble visualizing.”

Visual processing skills are essential to all aspects of learning – for both children and adults, she emphasizes. The term “visual processing” refers to the brain’s almost-instantaneous ability – consciously and nonconsciously – to take in external sensory signals (from eyesight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch), combine them with a person’s internal sensory signals (such as head position and muscle tension) and then synthesize – process — the information, allowing a person to react and respond normally to his or her environment.

“If brain circuitry is out of synchronization because it is simply under-developed or disrupted by injury or disease, people can become confused about their surrounding environment, have limited perception and awareness, and experience difficulties in learning,” Dr. Zelinsky says.

During his first Mind-Eye appointment, Dylan underwent four hours of testing, which indicated Dylan’s inability to focus his eyes on something and, at the same time, listen. His brain also was unable to adapt to shifts between tasks, such as reading a book or printed passage and then writing about what was just read.  Testing also determined Dylan “did not think as well while walking,” Dr. Zelinsky says. “Based on Donalee Markus’ tutelage, we found that Dylan had difficulty doing schoolwork when his legs were crossed, such that one hip was more forward than the other.”

Donalee Markus PhD. is a cognitive restructuring specialist and founder of Designs for Strong Minds in Highland Park, Ill.  On Dr. Zelinsky’s recommendation, Dylan is expected to see her sometime in 2022.  Meanwhile, in a recent blog in Psychology Today, Dr. Markus writes, “How we position our feet [when we sit] may affect our ability to think and concentrate.  Over 40 years of clinical practice, I have learned that a seated person’s foot position can reflect postural problems [affecting] cognitive performance.”[1]

Dr. Zelinsky concurs. “Posture can very much affect the brain’s processing of environmental information passing through the retina. When a hip is positioned forward, the shoulders rotate slightly and the eyes move sideways a bit, creating changes in visual inputs.  A neurotypical person can adapt, but, oftentimes, a person with learning challenges cannot easily adjust to the sensory confusion.”

Until now, Jackie and her husband had struggled to find answers to the academic, social, and behavioral challenges plaguing Dylan since preschool. “His reading and verbal abilities were off the chart, but, when writing, he did not know how to start a sentence and could not understand punctuation,” Jackie says. As for math, “if he got it, Dylan was amazing, but, if he did not, he would get frustrated to the core of who he is.”

Nobody had answers – not teachers, not school officials, not counselors or doctors, says Jackie.  She remembers receiving almost daily calls from teachers unable to address Dylan’s issues in the classroom – such frequency of calls that she could no longer work as a clinical counselor and had to become a stay-at-home mom.  “I would receive multiple calls from school any given day and sometimes had to go and pick him up.”

But life has made a 180-degree turn for Dylan since he received his Mind-Eye brain glasses.

“In just a matter of months, he is already much closer to where I hope he can eventually be. Meeting Dr. Zelinsky has changed my life.  My eyes have been opened to things I needed to see to help my son,” says Jackie, who no longer gets pick-up-your-son phone calls from teachers.  “Much of Dylan’s turnaround seems to have been [the result of] his [brain] glasses.”

Dylan is now able to “read and write coherently, watch a movie and then write about it, and [as noted above] calm himself down when he needs to,” says Jackie.  “Other parents should know what a resource the Mind-Eye Institute is.”

In fact, now that calls from Dylan’s teachers have stopped, Jackie is even considering a return to work.

Although Dylan has undergone significant symptomatic relief, his experience is not always the norm nor is it guaranteed for every patient.  Check out the Mind-Eye Institute website at www.mindeye.com for additional information.

[1] Markus, Donalee, The Feet Tell the Story: How Foot Position Affects Cognitive Performance, November 21, 2021, Psychology Today