Mental Optometry: The Mind’s Eye, You Go Where You’re Looking

Abstract

The term, Mental Optometry, is newly developed concept that can be used to describe the interplay between mind, brain, and sensory interpretations. Taken from the premise of behavioral optometry and research explaining body orientation to physical field of vision, what we see or perceive with our mind’s eye, emotions and behaviors will also follow in the same manner. While not explicitly referred to in such a manner, cognitive, cognitive behavioral, and cognitive bias formation theories imply such a concept as being foundational to their systems. Mental Optometry arms the theorist and practitioner with a neurobiological empowered understanding of mood, emotion, thought, and interpretations of visual stimuli such that therapeutic interventions can be developed to assist patients in recognizing and altering skewed interpretations of what they think they see (the mind’s eye) – imagery that may deleteriously support negative cognitions leading to negative mood states.