Video games that contain high levels of action, such as Unreal Tournament, can actually improve your vision.
Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month
improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter—a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular
ophthalmology clinics
In essence, playing video game improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart.
"After just 30 hours, players showed a substantial increase in the spatial resolution of their vision, meaning they could see figures like those on
an eye chart more clearly, even when other symbols crowded in."
At the outset, the students were given a crowding test, which measured how well they could discern the orientation of a "T" within a crowd of other
distracting symbols—a sort of electronic eye chart.
Students were then divided into two groups.
The experimental group played Unreal Tournament, a first-person shoot-'em-up action game, for roughly an hour a day.
The control group played Tetris, a game equally demanding in terms of motor control, but visually less complex.
After about a month of near-daily gaming, the Tetris players showed no improvement on the test, but the Unreal Tournament players could tell which way
the "T" was pointing much more easily than they had just a month earlier.
SOURCE:
Physorg.com
This is a very interesting finding, and one which I can personally
understand, as I have actually noticed that in myself.
It is interesting to see how video games are being found to actu-
ally have many positive benefits, especially after the period of last
year where there were a few studies linking video games to nega-
tive things.
So, the next time someone tells you to quit playing video games
because they're bad for your eyes, you can tell them they're wrong.
Comments, Opinions?
[edit on 2/6/2007 by iori_komei]