So, is there someone out there who can explain to me what the world looks like through a lazy eye? How does the world look with one lazy eye… and how does that differ if you have two… like that guy in Young Frankenstein… ? Is there a place online where you can get a visual example of the world through the eyes of the lazy eyes… and do they provide better side vision? I’m curious about field of vision and all of that…
I don’t have lazy eye, I’m not a doctor, in fact I don’t know much about lazy eye at all…
However, I do seem to remember someone saying that the brain will eventually stop paying attention to one of the eyes and the person will only be seeing out of one eye. Maybe someone can verify this?
To get an idea what I see, close one eye until it is almost completley shut, then read for a bit like that. More than likely, you will start to ignore the imput from the “bad” eye, and have vision that is, for the most part, simply monocular. The brain shuts out the inferior input. Of course you won’t shut it out nearly as well as my brain does, because I have had all my life to learn to do it. (whether I want to “learn” or not.)
BTW, I had an operation when I was a kid, where they removed my eye and worked on the back side of it to correct the lazy eye. It will generally follow along with my other eye now,(unless I am really tired) but I still can’t functionally see out of it. The operation was done a little latter than they generally recomend. But hey, at least I didnt go fully blind in the eye, so I have some vague sense of depth percpetion. As to what someone sees when both of there eyes suffer from Strabismus, I am not sure.
Please note that “lazy eye” , or Amblyopia properly refers to one eye that has inferior, uncorrectable vision. This is what I have. The condition that you are actually refering to (that I used to have a mild case of prior to the operation) is called Strabismus.
I have Variable Exotropia (one eye or the other turns outward slightly when not ‘in use’).
I find it useful, as I use my shortsighted eye for reading/computers and my ‘good’ eye for driving/distance vision.
This is likely correctable, but my parents never researched treatment for it.
As stated by Beltane one filters out the intput from the other eye. If I concentrate I can point both eyes at an object, but it gives me a bit of a headache and it is hard to focus.
I don’t know if I have ‘better’ peripheral vision, as I have nothing to compare to.
How did the actor from young frankenstein see? you know the guy … Mel Brooks movies with the huge bug eyes that point opposite directions…
go here to see who i’m talking about, willis…
I’m not an expert… (as usual)… but one of my eyes has been called “lazy eye.” It dooesn’t mean better peripheral vision for me. There are other factors, such as the focus point and where it’s localed along the back part of your eyeball… So the apparent place where your eye is pointing isn’t the only thing to be considered.
I’ve had 6 surgeries to correct lazy eye (they finally got it right when I was 35).
It doesn’t give you any better peripheral vision…it gives you horrendous headaches. I had to physically try and correct the orientation of my left eye, to get it to look straight ahead and focus on what my unaffected right eye was looking at. That makes for tremendous eye strain and skull splitting headaches. My glasses had prisms built into the lenses that forced my eye to focus to the front, which helped some.
I have strabismus with a side of astigmatism. Had surgery when I was a year old, wore band-aid type patches over my dominant eye so the other’s muscles would get stronger, and when I was 12 or so I’d get eyestrain headaches almost weekly. Fun times.
How does the world look with one lazy eye… and how does that differ if you have two?
Two lazy eyes, huh? That’s gotta suck. 
The short answer is I don’t see the world through a lazy eye. If my eye is drifting away, it’s because I’m not using it (and therefore it can’t add to my peripheral vision). Basically, I don’t use both eyes to see. I can make myself look at things with both eyes, but doing so 1) requires effort, 2) causes eyestrain that can escalate into a nasty headache, and 3) does not allow me to focus on a specific thing. I could look in a direction and see what’s there, but not with clarity.
As Beltane said, your brain learns to filter out what your “unused” eye is seeing. I’m like CheapBastid in that I use a different eye based on the task– my left eye is more comfortable for nearsighted tasks and my right is more comfortable with farsighted tasks. Whatever eye isn’t being used aims in the same direction of the one being used; it just doesn’t see as much. (I remember as a kid being sensitive to what the “other” eye was looking at and forcing them to move in tandem as much as possible. It’s probably what caused the headaches.)
For me, the question of “What’s it like to see with lazy eye?” becomes “What’s it like to see with just one eye?” Because I’ve been this way my entire life, I have no basis for comparison and couldn’t give you anything insightful. But a professor of mine once had a cataract, and after surgery to remove it could only see with the unaffected eye. In addition to the revelation that yellow shirts were not the latest fashion trend, he said the biggest difference was the lack of depth perception, which was a problem whenever he played tennis, as he couldn’t judge how far away the ball was. So I guess seeing with one eye is just like seeing with two, except your depth perception is poorer.