Video-Game Play Induces Plasticity in the Visual System of Adults with Amblyopia

A pilot study suggests that playing video games may enhance a range of spatial vision functions in adults with amblyopia. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01223716 Author Summary: Early abnormal visual experience disrupts neuronal circuitry in the brain and results in reduced vision, known as amblyopia or “lazy eye,” the most frequent cause of permanent visual loss in childhood. It is generally believed that adult amblyopia is irreversible beyond the sensitive period of brain development during childhood. In this study, we examine whether playing video games, both action and non-action, has an effect on the vision of adults with amblyopia. We assessed visual acuity (visual resolution), positional acuity (the ability to localize object's relative position), spatial attention (the ability to direct visual attention to various locations in the visual field), and stereoacuity (stereo-vision / 3-D depth perception) in a small group of teenagers and adults. We found that they tended to recover vision much faster than we would have expected from the results of conventional occlusion therapy in childhood amblyopia. Additional experiments and modelling suggest that the improvements are a result of decreasing spatial distortion and increasing information processing efficiency in the amblyopic brain. Thus, video games may include essential elements for active vision training to boost visual performance. Most importantly, our findings suggest that video-game play may provide important principles for treating amblyopia, a suggestion that we are pursuing with larger scale clinical trials.