Popular Puzzle Video Game Tetris Used to Treat Lazy Eye Disoder

Research published in the journal Current Biology reveals an innovative method to treat adult amblyopia, commonly known as lazy eye.

The study, led by Dr. Robert Hess from McGill University and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), has done this with the help of popular video game Tetris. 

Lazy eye is one of the most common causes of visual impairment in kids. Due to the poor processing of information in the brain, the weaker eye gets suppressed by the stronger eye. Prior to this, the disorder was treated by covering the stronger eye and forcing the weaker eye to work. This was successful to some degree.

The video game Tetris helps in distributing information between two eyes in a complementary fashion, making both eyes function together.

This is the first study which shows that reducing the suppression of the weaker eye by forcing both eyes to function together increases the level of plasticity in the brain, and permits the amblyopic brain to relearn.

"Using head-mounted video goggles we were able to display the game dichoptically, where one eye was allowed to see only the falling objects, and the other eye was allowed to see only the ground plane objects," explains Dr. Hess, who also serves as director of McGill Vision Research. "Forcing the eyes to work together, we believed, would improve vision in the lazy eye."

In the current study, researchers tested a sample of 18 adults who were suffering from amblyopia. Out of this, nine adults were made to play games monocularly with the weaker eye, the stronger eye being covered. The other nine players played the same game dichoptically, in which each eye could view separate parts of the game. They did this for two weeks.

The researchers noticed an improvement in the vision of those who played the dichoptic game. Apart from this, they experienced an improvement in 3-D depth perception. In comparison, the monocular patching group had a very moderate improvement, and they were put to the new dichoptic training, after which their vision improved.