Play action video games, get better vision

Want to improve your vision? Watch some video games that involve high levels of action, such as Unreal Tournament or Supreme Commander, Halo 2 or Doom.Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20% in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter—a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics.  More specifically, people who play what’s known as  first-person shooter (FPS) games typically characterized by the in-game character’s point of view and a focus on the use of handheld ranged weapons developed better vision.”Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information,” says Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, said in a statement., players showed a substantial increase in the spatial resolution of their vision, meaning they could see figures like those on an eye chart more clearly, even when other symbols crowded in.” According to a release, student players we given what’s known as a ‘crowding test,” which measures how well people can  discern the orientation of a “T” within a crowd of other distracting symbols—a sort of electronic eye chart. Students were then divided into two groups. The experimental group played Unreal Tournament, a first-person shoot-’em-up action game, for roughly an hour a day. The control group played Tetris, a game equally demanding in terms of motor control, but visually less complex. After about a month of near-daily gaming, the Tetris players showed no improvement on the test, but the Unreal Tournament players could tell which way the “T” was pointing much more easily than they had just a month earlier. Researchers are now delving into how the brain responds to other visual stimuli. They plan to use a new 360-degree virtual-reality computer lab now being completed at the University of Rochester.