Research shows video games improve eyesight


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Research shows video games improve eyesight

Playing video games can help improve the vision of adults with amblyopia, or lazy eye, according to a pilot study by vision researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

The study has found that participants suffering from the condition saw a marked improvement in visual alertness and 3D depth perception after spending just 40hrs playing regular, off-the-shelf video games.

?This study is the first to show that video game play is useful for improving blurred vision in adults with amblyopia,? said study lead author Dr. Roger Li, research optometrist at the School of Optometry and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley.

?I was very surprised by this finding; I didn?t expect to see this type of improvement.?

Amblyopi is a brain disorder in which the vision in one eye does not develop properly. It is the most common cause of permanent visual impairment in childhood, and is also the most frequent cause of one-eye visual impairment among young and middle-aged adults.

?These new findings are very encouraging because there are currently no accepted treatments for adults with amblyopia,? said study principal investigator Dr. Dennis Levi, UC Berkeley professor and dean of optometry and a researcher at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.

The findings came about as researchers ponded if playing video games, with their rich variety of visual stimuli, could generate better visual improvements for amblyopes than the existing more mundane visual tasks in use.

However, before you go about using this as defense for prolonged video game binges, there haven?t been other studies to support these findings ? yet.

But the results have proved so promising that Levi has received a three-year, $1.7 million NEI grant to continue research into video game therapy for the treatment of amblyopia in children and adults.

?Playing a video game is a lot more fun than just wearing a patch, so the hope is that compliance is likely to be higher among kids,? said Levi. ?Wearing a patch can be socially awkward for some kids, so our hope is to see faster improvement by having them do an intensive task like playing a video game.?

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