World Leader in Modifying Eyeglasses to Affect Brain Activity Chairs Three Panels at Brain-Mapping Congress

A Chicago area optometrist, recognized globally for revolutionizing scientific understanding of how light affects brain function, will again chair three major panel sessions on topics in neuro-optometry, neuro-optometric rehabilitation and neuro-modulation during the 17th Annual World Congress of the Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics (SBMT) at the Los Angeles Convention Center, March 20-22, 2020.
Deborah Zelinsky O.D., founder and research director of the Mind-Eye Institute, based in Northbrook, Ill., was recently honored with a position on the SBMT board of directors. She will moderate more than a dozen speakers and 15 presentations on connections between the eye and the brainstem and limbic system, the retina’s role as a “window to the mind and body” and the “impact of stable visual skills on quality of life.” The three workshops are intended for optometrists, researchers and medical doctors.

This is the third year in a row in which Dr. Zelinsky has been asked to lead a series of panel workshops at the SBMT annual meeting, as well as moderate a roundtable discussion.

The World Congress of the SBMT brings together physicians, scientists, engineers, policymakers and biotech leaders from throughout the world to learn more about advances and applications in brain and spinal cord mapping and image-guided therapies (such as MRIs and diffusion tensor imaging).

Dr. Zelinsky was invited to serve as a section chair of the conference not only because of her leadership role in the SBMT but because of her ground-breaking clinical successes and research in neuro-optometric rehabilitation.

“Since the retina serves as a two-way portal into the mind and body, by changing incoming light, we can affect how the brain reacts to information about the environment and modify a person’s spatial awareness, body posture and selective attention to sound,” Dr. Zelinsky says.

Using optometric interventions to selectively stimulate light dispersed on the retina, Dr. Zelinsky’s Mind-Eye Institute team helps patients redevelop visual skills during recovery from debilitating, life-altering symptoms of brain injuries, including concussions and stroke. The Mind-Eye Institute also helps develop new visual skills in patients with learning and behavioral problems.

“The mind-eye connection is unique to each person’s processing system and experiences. Neuro-optometric rehabilitation is one portion of mind-eye testing – versus conventional eye health and eyesight testing. Therapeutic methods are prescribed on a very individualized basis in order to bring a patient’s sensory systems into synchronization and lessen some symptoms,” Dr. Zelinsky explains.

Besides the optometric sessions led by Dr. Zelinsky, the Congress has literally hundreds of other speakers, covering subjects in neurosurgery and neurology, psychiatry, radiology, neuroscience, neuro-engineering, nano-bio-electronics, neuro-imaging, neuro-oncology, advancements in treatment of brain disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease, spinal cord research – even space medicine.