Andrew Huberman· PhD
This is going to keep the muscles, I want to be clear, this is going to keep the extraocular muscles conditioned and strong and allow you to have a healthy smooth pursuit system.
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The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
This is going to keep the muscles, I want to be clear, this is going to keep the extraocular muscles conditioned and strong and allow you to have a healthy smooth pursuit system.
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The idea is that you want to use the visual system regularly for what it was designed for, and smooth pursuit is a great way to keep the visual and motion tracking systems of the brain and the eye and the extraocular muscles working in a really nice coordinate fashion.
So if you're doing a lot of reading up close, you're not viewing horizons, you're not getting a lot of smooth pursuit type stimulation from your life, or you're just getting it within the confines of a little box on your phone, like your smooth pursuit is over, you know, millimeters or what we always talk in terms of visual angle, but the amount of degrees of visual angle. But if you're just looking at smooth pursuit in this little tiny box on your phone, or on your computer screen, and you're not looking at objects in your environment like swooping birds and things like that, which I'm guessing many of you are not spending your time doing, well, these mechanisms for smooth pursuit will get worse over time. Your vision will get worse.
Exercise your eye muscles, exercise the accommodation mechanisms of your eyes, practice a little bit of smooth pursuit. You don't have to be neurotic about this, but if you do this often enough, meaning every other day, every third day or so, you can be the strange person on the plane or in the classroom doing this. You know, that people might chuckle or look at you funny, or tease you, but that's okay, because you'll be able to see when they are losing their vision, so you'll get the last laugh.
but by doing that smooth pursuit task for a bit each day, maybe just a minute or two, you're maintaining your ability through the musculature of the eye to do smooth pursuit.
The idea is that you want to use the visual system regularly for what it was designed for and smooth pursuit is a great way to keep the visual and motion tracking systems of the brain and the eye and the extracular muscles working in a really nice coordinate fashion.
The tool is spend two to three minutes doing smooth pursuit. There's some programs on YouTube. Um you can just look up smooth pursuit stimulus. Practice accommodation for a few minutes maybe every other