Video Games Sharpen Vision

Thomas B. Thomas, an analyst and programmer at the Center for Visual Science, hones his vision at the screen of an action video game.

Action video games can improve your vision.

Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and graduate student Shawn Green, 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.

"Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information," says Bavelier.

The research, which was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, suggests that people with visual deficits may be able to gain an increase in their visual acuity with special rehabilitation software that reproduces an action game's need to identify objects very quickly.