Thursday, September 23, 2010

Video Games May Help Treat Lazy Eye


Scientific studies on video games have mainly focused on the harmful effects of playing the fast-moving action games on computer or TV screens. But new research indicates that video game therapy can improve the vision of adults with lazy eye also known as Amblyopia.

Amblyopia is a brain disorder in which the vision in one eye does not develop properly and is the most frequent cause of permanent visual impairment in childhood, affecting two to three of every 100 children, according to the National Eye Institute. Amblyopia is also the most common cause of one-eye visual impairment among young adults or people in middle age.

Although lazy eye in children can be treated by putting a patch over the “good eye” to force the brain to use the “lazy” one, few options have been available for adults with the disorder. Conventional wisdom has held that unless the disorder is corrected in childhood, “damage was thought to be irreversible".

Sept. 22, 2010 -- Most scientific studies on video games have focused on the harmful effects of playing the fast-moving action games on computer or TV screens. But new research indicates that video game therapy can improve the vision of adults with lazy eye.

A study published in the Sept. 21 issue of PLoS Biology shows that people with lazy eye, or amblyopia, had marked improvement in visual acuity and 3-D depth perception after spending 40 hours playing video games.

Study researcher Roger Li, PhD, of the School of Optometry and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, says the study is the first to show that playing video games can improve blurred vision in adults with lazy eye.

Researchers used an action video game that required subjects to shoot at targets, or a non-action game where users construct things on screen. Twenty subjects participated, between the ages of 20 and 60.

In one experiment, 10 patients played the action video game for 40 hours, two hours at a time, over the course of a month. In another, three people played the non-action video game for the same amount of time, while wearing a patch over their good eyes.

The researchers say both experiments produced a 30% increase in visual acuity, or an average of 1.5 lines on the standard letter charges used by optometrists.

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