Why Your Eyes Still Hurt After a Concussion with Dr. Melissa Biscardi | E77
About This Episode
Your eyes can be the bottleneck in concussion recovery, and they can also be the missing piece when someone still has headaches years later despite doing “all the right things.” We sit down with Dr. Melissa Biscardi to unpack her PhD work on eye movements and concussion, including a virtual reality (VR) eye training intervention that adapts week by week based on how each person performs and what symptoms show up. We talk through what clinicians can actually measure, why near point of convergence is so central to daily function, and how to think about huge sets of eye movement data without cherry-picking a single metric.
Then we move into what we’re both seeing in real clinics: people who already completed vision therapy but still live with chronic daily post-traumatic headache, light sensitivity, and a deep, physical orbital ache. We explore the “eye pain, head pain, light pain” overlap through the trigeminal nerve, how the autonomic nervous system can react during visual tasks, and why a slower, gentler progression can sometimes be the difference between progress and a flare. Melissa shares hands-on strategies aimed at creating ease in the eye tissues, while we also compare options like acupuncture, peripheral nerve stimulation, and simple eye mobility work that is about comfort, not just performance.
We also get practical about technology in concussion rehab: VR can be engaging and scalable, but headset fit and interpupillary distance calibration can trigger symptoms, especially in vulnerable populations. Melissa explains how different VR scenarios can help or backfire, and she walks us through the Brain Toolkit app she built to put eye drills and assessment tools like balance and reaction time into more clinicians’ and patients’ hands. If you find this helpful, subscribe, share it with someone navigating post-concussion syndrome, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
Dr. Melissa Biscardi: website
Instagram: @concussionrehab.ca
YouTube: @concussionrehab
Brain Tool Kit: https://www.instagram.com/braintoolkit