Train Yourself To See Farther With This App

Not sure if nonsense, sounds interesting though. Actually seems legit.

In a study published this week in the journal Current Biology, Seitz worked with 19 players on the University of California, Riverside, baseball team, and showed that his app UltimEyes lengthened the distance at which the players could see clearly by an average of 31 percent. After using the app for 30 25-minute intervals, players saw an improvement that pushed many of them beyond normal 20/20 vision, including seven who attained freakishly good 20/7.5 vision—meaning that at a distance of 20 feet, they were clearly seeing what someone with normal vision could see at no farther than 7.5 feet away.

So it's more about the brain than the eyes. I think I kinda get it.

UltimEyes exercises the visual cortex, the part of our brain that controls vision. Brain researchers have discovered that the visual cortex breaks down the incoming information from our eyes into fuzzy patterns called Gabor stimuli. The theory behind UltimEyes is that by directly confronting the eyes with Gabor stimuli, you can train your brain to process them more efficiently—which, over time, improves your brain's ability to create clear vision at farther distances.

Gabor stimuli pic:



Appears that the actual reasons this work are hard to pin down, and that the length of time someone is affected varies, along with the amount of change, and if both eyes, or one or the other are affected more.

I think it's fascinating stuff. It was likened to be the same kind of improvement as going to the Optometrist and getting your prescription updated. I remember the first time I got contacts, and like the guy says 'The trees have more leaves'. Shoot I just thought they all looked like blobs.

Link

I should have mentioned I found this on Reddit. The researcher actually came into the thread. I'm going to quote him, and give a link but remember Reddit is not ATS so there may be some NSFW things at the link.

Here are some quick answers:
First, this is improved vision, however it doesn't fix the eye. Thus if focus is not ideal, there is a stigmatism, a scotoma, etc, then the brain can learn to do the best with what it is given but the problem with the input will remain. This said, it is important to realize that there are two general causes of poor vision, those related to ocular impairments for which improvement of the eye-function is required, and brain-based impairments for which brain training can help. Typically we suffer from a mixture of these and thus brain training can give some advantage even without ocular improvement and vise-versa.
Second, they eye-chart used stimuli completely different than what they were trained on (Gabors) and improvements were still found. Likewise benefits were found on the baseball field, indicating that the benefits transferred to real-world settings.

3). Yes, a major component of my research is on low-vision. I am excited about this research line (right now working with people with Amblyopia, AMD, Cataracts, Glaucoma, etc) with good preliminary results, however, it may take at year or more before I have a substantial data set that would be ready for peer review. Research is slow when months of training per patient is required.

4). The untrained control did nothing. This is a limitation of the current study. We are currently doing studies with placebo condition and better controls (not with athletes though; it is hard to convince a coach to give their team a placebo) and so stay tuned. The current manuscript represents a nice proof of principle but there is a lot more work to be done!

5). Studies of hearing are at a much earlier stage, one target is to improve language comprehension in people with traumatic brain injury and another is phonetic discrimination for non-native language phonemes, however, nothing is ready for prime-time. I'd also like to help people with hearing aids and cochlear implants, but again, this research time and resources intensive and I'm still working to build up this part of the program.

6). I encourage you to read the primary sources to learn more. Still, you are right, this is the type of research that opens up more questions than it answers. There is a great deal of research in the field of perceptual learning upon which this study is based, however, more research is required to fully understand all processes involved. The good news is that I'm not stopping here, and my hope is that more people will be inspired to expand upon this research.

Link To Thread

This is very interesting.
We all knew of course that training the brain is important, older people are advised to do certain games to keep the brain "fit".

But this brings it to the next level.

Very exciting!! Thank you for posting.

Thanks for the thread Domo. S&F brother!!

I've heard there's something similar that improves your near vision as well. I've been sporadically trying to find reviews on it that don't look scripted.

Snarl
Thanks for the thread Domo. S&F brother!!

I've heard there's something similar that improves your near vision as well. I've been sporadically trying to find reviews on it that don't look scripted.

Awesome! If you find something I trust you'll post it.

Domo1

Snarl
Thanks for the thread Domo. S&F brother!!

I've heard there's something similar that improves your near vision as well. I've been sporadically trying to find reviews on it that don't look scripted.

Awesome! If you find something I trust you'll post it.

Aye. PM me if you're having issues with your vision. Can't remember if I've ever posted my experience with LASEK (not LASIK) to ATS.

ETA: might want to have a look at this first.

reply to post by Snarl


I have to wear contacts. One eye is near sighted, the other far sighted. Help me? I think the only reason it took so long for me to realize is that I can sort of squint one eye or the other to see far away or near.

Domo1
reply to post by Snarl

 

I have to wear contacts. One eye is near sighted, the other far sighted. Help me? I think the only reason it took so long for me to realize is that I can sort of squint one eye or the other to see far away or near.

I had my eyes fixed a little over a year ago. The technology available to do that today is truly advanced compared to the butchering that went on ten years ago.

What caught my attention in your article was something the surgeon told me on a follow-up. He said it takes the 'brain' about six months to correct itself to the near perfection of one's new vision. Remember what it's like wearing a new prescription set of glasses? How you kinda feel like you're wearing beer goggles and you maybe take it easy walking down a flight of stairs? Best I can describe it. It just takes less time getting used to glasses.

I'm here to tell you, if I was born again with 20/20 vision, I'd take the surgery for the improvements that go beyond crisp vision. I can see color now! I had heard women see color better than men. I know I wasn't seeing all the colors I can see now. The fix on my depth perception took 10 strokes off my handicap. I could go on but I don't have a keyboard.

Make sure you see my ETA on my last post. I'm a born skeptic.