Dave

This is an amazing article.  Thanks!

If this is true then it could be possible that amblyopia is related to
the patching effect that a better seeing eye is always giving the
opposite hemisphere.  So that over time it preferentially turns on one
hemisphere at the expense of the other.  You would then think that
just such an opposite patching regime might help amblyopia but this is
thought to be only true in children. However it has been
suggested/claimed that a more aggressive intervention at the level of
the brain and learning can overcome amblyopia even in adults.   What
is known is that if the good eye is lost in an adult the amblyopic eye
always makes some form of recovery.   So its clear there is no hard
and fast rule for two eyed adults

Also astigmatism and strabismus seem possibly candidates for this kind
of interpretation.   If what the eye sees, can stimulate prefentially
one half of the brain, then it follows that the perceptions of one
half of the brain can preferentially stimulate one eye.  And therefore
conflict in perceptions could lead to subtle conflicts in the
movements of the eyes as suggested by Roberto Kaplan OD and others.

Are you aware of MRI studies on amblyopia strabismus astigmatism and
so forth?

This is a hugely complicated area.  Whatever biases might be in
operation when patching is done its clear that these effects are only
biases and very subtle effects.   For example no person ever sees the
difference between their two hemi fields in one eye - its completely
seamless - even if they have different colour vision in each separate
eye.

However Fred Schiffer MD a harvard psychiatrist has used eye patching
to reveal different perceptions and memories (admittedly using a more
complex hemi field patch) but I have found that an ordinary patch has
the same effect for some people in a startling manner as if two
personalities are revealed.

Sooner or later this kind of stuff is going to come together in a
bigger picture sense so that all the conflicting pieces of information
makes perfect sense!

Andrew