Videogames to treat lazy eye

[Keystone Nyan Cat]

The Source: 

http://www.mumbaimirror.com/others/sci-tech/Using-videogames-to-treat-lazy-eye/articleshow/45224431.cms

 

The news:

For everyone who does not know, lazy eye is an eye with poor vision that is mainly caused by underuse. It impacts 2-3% of people and it results when the nueral pathway from one eye to another does not develop because the eye is sending blurry/ incompatible images. Scientists have created video games that are fun compared to the repetitive training needed to improve vision in people with lazy eye and poor depth perception. These games are a pacman styled "cat and mouse" game along with a "search for oddball" game.

 

These games have improved weak eye vision to 20/20 and 20/50 in adult research participants, whose vision was 20/25 and 20/63 respectively. Unlike the common use of eye patches on dominant eyes to make lazy eyes stronger, this type of testing uses a "push-pull" method by making both eyes work during the training. Patching is push-only training because the dominant eye remains unused. The games utilize 3D glasses that filter images to each eye.

With push-pull, both eyes are stimulated but with the weaker eye exposed to more complex images that create a stronger stimulus. In this way, both eyes are encouraged to interact as they should, but the dominant eye's power in the relationship is suppressed. This technique targets important pathways in the brain that must be active to produce balanced vision. 

The improvements lasted for at least eight months. 

The games feature groups of lines with differing orientation, and players wear 3D glasses that filter the images to each eye. The dominant eye is stimulated with only a full screen of horizontal lines. The weak eye sees bordered disks that contain vertical, horizontal or diagonal lines imposed against a background of those same horizontal lines. 
 

My take:

This is great news! Remember those times when people said staring at a computer screen can spoil your eyes? Show them this!

[Guest]

That's great and all, but treating lazy people seems like a much more pressing issue.

I really wanted to do something about that, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

[SpaceCore]

This is cool. I don't know anyone with a lazy eye, but cool anyway.

[SpaghettiCarbonara]

I've got a crooked eye (muscle problems) that leads to this. I'm interested to see if it helps with that possibly, probably not though...

[Trik'Stari]

Yet further proof that video games > everything.

[mr.squishy]

One of my friends used to have a lazy eye. They stuck a needle through his eye and had him move it (yes, he moved his eye with the needle in it) so that they could inject botox into the muscle behind it.

[witting]

I have lazy eye and I tell you those stickers suck badly. I will look into this but not sure

[catbutts]

Where do I get this game I need it 

[TechFan@ic]

I'm amblyopic and a medical student. So I've done a lot of research about using video games for the treatment of amblyopia. The efficacy of the treatment ranges greatly with the type of vehicle used. Two published researches have found that the Oculus rift is 5X more effective in treating amblyopia in children than simple eye patching.

The Oculus was also found to be the first vehicle that can treat adults with amblyopia. Previously it was thought that adults with lazy eye were simply untreatable.
Some eye clinics have also tried using the game tetris on cell phones to treat the condition and they had great success. So I'm very hopeful.

Severe cases of amblyopia can render one of your eyes completely useless, you can see images but they'll be so blurry that you won't be able to read, differentiate depth or even see the lines separating the lanes on a freeway.

[zanduh]

My brother has lazy eye. After he had surgery to correct some of the muscular issues behind the eye, they had him wear an eyepatch and play videogames to strengthen the eye. That was 13 years ago. 

[TechFan@ic]

Amblyopia/Lazy Eye is unrelated to muscular pathology of the eyes folks. Amblyopia is caused by an underdeveloped vision center for the corresponding eye in the brain, it was previously thought that it's caused by a weakness in the optic nerve but that has been proven false.

Amblyopia may lead to strabismus/eye squint and vice versa but they're both separate conditions. Strabismus/eye squint is treatable often through surgery to correct the muscular pathology while Amblyopia is not treatable after puberty. Or so has the medical society believed before the very recent research using video games and virtual reality.