Vision is the last of the senses to develop. A two day born baby can recognise his mother but he has a poorly developed eye and a poorly developed brain. With an immature eye sending wobbly signals to a still developing brain, a baby looks out at a different world than an adult. Baby is seeing that looks something like faded photo looked through a tube.
The fact the the baby doesn’t see very well, in a sense is very good for an immature brain and that’s because this immature brain cannot handle excess stimulation. The eye is damping down the extra stimulation making it something that the brain can handle much better. This stimulation is very critical.
If a baby has a cataract, the images that were supposed to be getting into brain, which are critical for it to be able to develop it’s vision, aren’t getting there. So the brain doesn’t get the opportunity to experience vision and go through it’s normal visual development.
When a elderly person has a cataract, all of her connections between eye and brain have been formed years ago, and they remain stable over time so even if they are not used,they don’t go away. But if a baby has cataract, even just one or two months of missing visual experience can have permanent consequences on they way brain is wired up and that brain can do later on.(Formation of Human Brain)
After the surgery, all of a sudden as if the eye is now open to the brain, it’s the same as the baby came out of the dark womb. For at least 5 years after the surgery until her visual development stabilizes, the baby has to patch his good eye. If the good eye is not patched, it is no point in having the surgery at all because the weak eye has to fight the good eye for cortical connections and the good eye if allowed to take over all the brain space will leave nothing for the deprived eye and it will get weaker. Patching good eye does not cause the problem that cataract do.
The brain can mature up to some point, without any visual experience. Although the brain is no better of that of a new born in the absence of visual experience. Once it get’s that visual experience, even the first hour of that experience sends that brain into action faster than it would in normal development.
When a baby is born prematurely, the brain is faced with more challenges then it would be facing in the mother’s womb. In the womb he/she doesn’t get food directly into the stomach, he/she gets food via the digestive system of the mother and he/she isn’t lying in a bed, he/she has all the support of the womb. He/she doesn’t have to breathe on her own, the mother’s whole body takes care of the baby.
A carefully controlled environment tuned to the baby’s special needs, helps them better manage the world around them as they grow.
Thinking Beyond Science 
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