Action video games can increase vision by 20%

Video games with a high level of action like Unreal Tournament can improve your eyesight.

Researchers at Rochester University have shown that those who play video games for a few hours a day for a month, their eyesight has increased by 20% in distinguishing the letters in one. string of letters.

Basically, playing video games improves the ability to see the last line in the standard visa table. According to Daphne Bavelier, a professor of brain and intellectual sciences at the University of Rochester, 'after 30 hours, gamers show an increase in the spatial resolution of their eyesight. This means they can clearly see the symbols like in the standard visa table and even when other symbols are interfering with it. '

Daphne Bavelier and Shawn Green.
(Photo: Rochester University)

Bavelier and graduate student Shawn Green conducted tests to see if there were college students who played a few video games last year.

Initially, students were tested on the ability to recognize the direction of the letter T in a series of other distracting characters, like the electronic vision table. After that, all students are divided into 2 groups. The group of students was allowed to play a game play Unreal Tournament about an hour a day.

The other group plays Tetris. A game that merely requires the ability to control the movement and non-complex images. After almost a month of playing games every day, students who played Tetris had no visual improvement when they were tested again. As for the group playing Unreal Tournament, it is possible to point exactly the direction of the T more easily than a month ago.

Bavelier explains ' when playing action video games, humans have changed the brain's image processing function. These games have pushed people's ability to handle images to their limits and the brain has changed to accommodate this change. This change continues to exist in other activities and may be in everyday life. '

The visual ability of the students has improved in the center and peripheral areas where they have never been ' trained '. This has given hope that people with visual impairments, like those with reduced vision, can increase their vision with the help of special recovery software that creates action games. requires recognition of images quickly.

The team is currently focusing on how the brain responds to other stimuli. They plan to use the 360o virtual reality lab to be completed at the University of Rochester. This study will be published in the Psychological Science journal next week and funded by the National Institute of Health.

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