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Video Game Adapted, Tested as Lazy Eye Treatment in Adults

Robert Hess with amblyopia patient trying the video game (McGill University)

Robert Hess with amblyopia patient trying the video game (McGill University)

Vision researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, with colleagues from China and New Zealand, adapted the video game Tetris in a treatment for adults with amblyopia, a condition commonly known as lazy eye. Ophthalmology professor Robert Hess and colleagues reported their findings in today’s issue of the journal Current Biology (paid subscription required).

Amblyopia occurs when central vision in one eye is lost or not developed, and not the result of some other condition nor correctable with lenses. Symptoms of amblyopia may include noticeable favoring of one eye or a tendency to bump into objects on one side. The university says amblyopia is the most common cause of visual impairment in childhood, affecting up to 3 per cent of the population.

The disorder is believed to be caused by poor processing of visual information in the brain, resulting in suppression of the weaker eye by the stronger eye. Current treatments usually involve putting a patch over the stronger eye, to cause the weaker to work harder and develop. These treatments, however, have been only partially successful in children and are largely ineffective in adults.

“The key to improving vision for adults, who currently have no other treatment options,” says Hess, “was to set up conditions that would enable the two eyes to cooperate for the first time in a given task.” To encourage the eyes to work better with each other in adults with amblyopia, Hess and colleagues used the 1980s-era video game Tetris that calls for connecting different shaped blocks as they fall to the ground.

The researchers devised head-mounted goggles that display the game dichoptically, where each eye is given different stimuli. In this case, the goggles showed to one eye of the viewer only the falling objects, while the viewer’s other eye saw only the objects on the ground. “Forcing the eyes to work together,” says Hess,  “we believed would improve vision in the lazy eye.”

The team tested the game and goggles treatment strategy on 18 adults with amblyopia. Nine of the participants played the game dichoptically, where each eye was allowed to view a separate part of the game. The other nine participants played the game monocularly with the weaker eye, and a patch over the stronger eye.

After two weeks, report the researchers, the participants playing the game with separate images in each eye had much more improvement in the vision of the weaker eye as well as in three-dimensional depth perception. The group with the monocular version of Tetris had some gain, but when this group switched to the dichoptic method, these participants experienced more improvement in their vision as well.

The team attributes the benefits of the dichoptic method to the higher degree of plasticity in the adult human brain. This increased plasticity, say the researchers, offers a way of treating vision disorders from a disrupted period of visual development in childhood.

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