Now you can claim to play FPS games to improve your vision!

[qubit]

Especially if you're a big fan of Unreal Tournament!

Unreal Tournament has been modded to treat amblyopia (Image: Epic Games)

It sounds like a teenager's dream: playing shoot-'em-up video games, on doctor's orders.

At the American Academy of Opthalmology's annual meeting in Orlando, Florida, a team led by Somen Ghosh of the Micro Surgical Eye Clinic in Kolkata, India, reported that video game therapy improved the visual acuity of 10- to 18-year-olds with amblyopia, or "lazy eye".

This comes hot on the heels of similar findings from a study of adults with the condition, published in PLoS Biology by a team led by Roger Li and Dennis Levi of the University of California, Berkeley. Even more impressive results may be on the horizon, as video games are combined with another approach, known as "perceptual learning".

Amblyopia occurs when the neural connections from one eye to the brain fail to develop normally. Over time, the brain reacts by ignoring the blurry input from this "weaker" eye.

The condition can be treated in childhood by patching the good eye and using visual training exercises to build the faulty neural connections - but the dogma has until recently been that little can be done after about the age of 9.

The idea of using video games stemmed from the discovery that expert gamers have unusually strong visual skills. Subsequent studies have shown that action games can improve contrast sensitivity in people with normal vision.

Ghosh's studies involved children and teenagers with amblyopia who received the standard treatment of patch, eyeglasses and visual exercises, with or without supplementary treatments. Even the group given just the basic treatment showed some improvement after one year - but those who were also instructed to play first-person shooter or driving games each day did noticeably better.

In adults, some of the best results in treating amblyopia have not used computer games, but instead trained people to distinguish blurry grey patterns known as Gabor patches. In 2004, a team led by Uri Polat of Tel Aviv University in Israel showed that this perceptual learning resulted in two-fold improvements to sufferers' contrast sensitivity.

But even Polat, who has recently applied a similar approach to treating the natural deterioration in close vision that happens with age, concedes that the exercises are a bit boring for teens.

So what about combining perceptual learning with gaming? That's now being tried by Levi's lab, in collaboration with a team led by Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester in New York.

The researchers have embedded Gabor patches into a modified version of the first-person shooter Unreal Tournament, which they are now testing as a treatment for amblyopia.

"You have to shoot at the patches," Bavelier explains. "If you don't they transform into nasty bots that are really difficult to kill.

New Scientists

 

[Deleted member 67555]

I knew it!!
I knew gaming was good for your eye muscles...
and DAMMIT we had to pay to have my Daughters lazy eye fixed...

Can't wait for the Lazy eyed Glaucoma study...LOL

 

[brandonwh64]

I knew it!!
I knew gaming was good for your eye muscles...
and DAMMIT we had to pay to have my Daughters lazy eye fixed...

Can't wait for the Lazy eyed Glaucoma study...LOL

is that were the introduce some funny cigs and games together LOL

 

[qubit]

I knew it!!
I knew gaming was good for your eye muscles...
and DAMMIT we had to pay to have my Daughters lazy eye fixed...

Can't wait for the Lazy eyed Glaucoma study...LOL

It might help me too. I recently had Bell's Palsy on the left side of my face, which has left me with a slight lingering weakness. Among it's various symptons and effects, it meant that I couldn't focus properly with my left eye. This is still true to this day, but it's less severe now. However, it does mean that I'm starting to develop a lazy eye, that I have to conciously correct, which oddly means that it's the right eye that's looking the wrong way. I really must get round to see the optician about this, who is likely to say they can't do anything about this.

I hope your daughter gets better soonest.

 

[xBruce88x]

so how'd they fix the lazey eye... ive usually been told theres nothing they can do... and the patch didnt work.

as for gaming ... i have noticed that i seem to respond to certain situations better than ppl who dont game... mostly when it comes to heavy traffic and idiots on the road lol

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

bs they cant fix it BUT they cant pull your eye out of the socket and shorten 1 muscle on the proper side to straight the eye, what this effectively does is keep the eye from wandering off, its more effective with say glasses, example i have amblyopia and my lazy eye fights the corrective nature of my lenses but by going through surgery when my glasses are on aka anytime im awake the eye remains straight its only with glasses off that it wanders about.

but yes typically theres no real way to fix lazy eye currently. for me it would require new eyes and neuro surgery to alter how my brain actually uses my eyes.

so yea TL DR no real fix but theres interesting ways to minimize the effects.

 

[hat]

so how'd they fix the lazey eye... ive usually been told theres nothing they can do... and the patch didnt work.

as for gaming ... i have noticed that i seem to respond to certain situations better than ppl who dont game... mostly when it comes to heavy traffic and idiots on the road lol

I handle driving very well. Today I've had a guy driving down the wrong side of the road coming right at me for a head on collision (to his credit, some large vehicle was parked on the other side of the road and I had just turned on), and I didn't even twitch. I just backed off the hammer, braked, let him go through and continued on... meanwhile my mom's flipping out. I've also had incidents on the freeway what with people slowing down, dodging in and out of lanes and such... like this one guy who flew up alongside me and moved in front of me in dense traffic (for a freeway). I just backed off the hammer, let him pass, and all was well.

 

[micropage7]

really?
i just feel kinda dizzy when i play FPS although for short time

 

[qubit]

really?
i just feel kinda dizzy when i play FPS although for short time

One possible reason is lag. I've noticed that too. If your system is laggy due to performance, mouse smoothing or monitor input lag, then it can induce dizziness.

 

[micropage7]

One possible reason is lag. I've noticed that too. If your system is laggy due to performance, mouse smoothing or monitor input lag, then it can induce dizziness.

yeah could be, thats why now i prefer stategy than fps. maybe my rig need tweak a little

 

[qubit]

yeah could be, thats why now i prefer stategy than fps. maybe my rig need tweak a little

Right, now I can give you a better answer (busy with work before).

While the stuff I mentioned previously can cause this, there's also lots of other possible reasons. The very first is that playing fps games triggers motion sickness in some people and there's nothing you can do about it, which is really unfortunate. Believe it or not, I can feel this a bit too and I play Unreal Tournament 2004 very fast and twitchy. If one has a bit of lazy eye or other visual condition then they can also feel disoriented.

Try the following to reduce all lag to see if lag is causing this for you:

- Force vsync off in the nvidia driver
- Run UT
- Turn off mouse smoothing
- Set the resolution and details so that the system is doing well over 200fps consistently. This is important
- Use a CRT monitor if at all possible. If you're on an IPS LCD monitor, then it's no good. A good, fast TN display is critical here. The problem is that all 60Hz LCD monitors have some noticeable lag to them, which can ruin this test. A 120Hz monitor would really help here

Move around the arena blasting bots and see how it feels - even just turning round with the mouse. With the system doing such high frame rates, lag will be reduced and screen tearing kept to a minimum.

If you don't have this game, you can pick it up for very little money nowadays and DRM-free from www.gog.com

Let us know how you get on.

 

[micropage7]

Right, now I can give you a better answer (busy with work before).

While the stuff I mentioned previously can cause this, there's also lots of other possible reasons. The very first is that playing fps games triggers motion sickness in some people and there's nothing you can do about it, which is really unfortunate. Believe it or not, I can feel this a bit too and I play Unreal Tournament 2004 very fast and twitchy. If one has a bit of lazy eye or other visual condition then they can also feel disoriented.

Try the following to reduce all lag to see if lag is causing this for you:

- Force vsync off in the nvidia driver
- Run UT
- Turn off mouse smoothing
- Set the resolution and details so that the system is doing well over 200fps consistently. This is important
- Use a CRT monitor if at all possible. If you're on an IPS LCD monitor, then it's no good. A good, fast TN display is critical here. The problem is that all 60Hz LCD monitors have some noticeable lag to them, which can ruin this test. A 120Hz monitor would really help here

Move around the arena blasting bots and see how it feels - even just turning round with the mouse. With the system doing such high frame rates, lag will be reduced and screen tearing kept to a minimum.

If you don't have this game, you can pick it up for very little money nowadays and DRM-free from www.gog.com

Let us know how you get on.

wow
thanks alot, im gonna check it out

 

[Deleted member 67555]

so how'd they fix the lazey eye... ive usually been told theres nothing they can do... and the patch didnt work.

They do a minor surgery to weaken the muscles on the strong eye to force the weak eye to work harder....It's a simple out patient procedure....

I hope your daughter gets better soonest.

She was fully recovered within 8 days....The Dr. said the key is catching it ASAP...or they may have to do the surgery multiple times...

besides this she has had 7 other surgeries associated with Pierre Robin syndrome/stickler syndrome

 

[de.das.dude]

a team led by Somen Ghosh of the Micro Surgical Eye Clinic in Kolkata, India, reported that video game therapy improved the visual acuity of 10- to 18-year-olds with amblyopia, or "lazy eye".

wow. i have this. and this guy is in my city. i probably went to this place.

 

[RejZoR]

Games improve reaction times and they do require your eyes some heavy lifting to stay "in the game". There is only one disadvantage. Fixed display range. You can't get around that. Maybe 3D will change that, but i doubt that eye will behave any different when viewing actual 3D image or 3D image on a flat surface like we do now.