London - It is a discovery unlikely to be popular with parents who tell their children the very opposite.
Playing videogames could actually be good for your eyesight – at least if you have trouble seeing in the first place.
Just ten hours of gaming over four weeks dramatically improved the vision of young men and women who as babies were almost blind. After 40 hours of playing, they were able to read two extra lines on an eye chart, a study found.
The simple but effective therapy was devised by Daphne Maurer, of McMaster University in Canada, whose work was inspired by previous studies which showed that playing action games improved vision in adults whose eyesight was already good.
Those with healthy eyes are believed to benefit from playing due to the brain forming new connections or dormant cells waking up. It could mean just a few hours a week playing games such as the type which simulate sports on the Wii console helps boost eyesight. The adults in Professor Maurer study, aged between 19 and 31, were born with cataracts in both eyes and as babies could see light but not detail. Although their cataracts were removed, their vision did not return to normal.
In the experiment, they played a game in which they took on the role of a solider shooting the enemy or a gunman firing at aliens.
After 40 hours, as well as being able to see further down the eye chart, the volunteers were better at distinguishing the direction of a movement and at telling faces apart.
Presenting her findings to the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference, Professor Maurer said: “Videogames have got a lot going for them in terms of them being an optimal visual therapy.”
Her other studies suggest that the first ten years of life “hardwire” the part of the brain critical to decoding visual information. If it doesn’t receive enough information, due to cataracts for example, it struggles to make up the loss.
The game helped with this because it forced the brain to work hard, by making it process information on the line of fire and “threats” on the periphery. Less dynamic games such as Tetris would not have the same effect. - Daily Mail