Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Video games may improve eyesight


[Warning: This article may be disturbing to people who, like me, believe that mums are infallible]

Telegraph.co.uk reports: [edited]

Far from being harmful to eyesight, as many experts had feared, action games such as 'Counter-Strike', 'Call of Duty' and 'Left 4 Dead' provide excellent training for what eye doctors call 'contrast sensitivity'.

People who participated in a video-game training programme saw significant improvements in their ability to notice subtle differences in shades of gray, a finding that may help people who have trouble with night driving, the researchers said.

"Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery - somehow changing the optics of the eye," said Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester in New York, whose study appears in the journal Nature Neuroscience. "But we've found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information more efficiently, and the improvements last for months after game play stopped."

"When people play action games, they're changing the brain's pathway responsible for visual processing. These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it" she said.
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1 comment:

Lift Station Degreaser said...

These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it" she said.

 
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