Prompt's TechBlog

Those of us who are guilty of being glued to the TV screen all day and in danger of having 'square eyes' might console ourselves with the knowledge that new research has found that video games actually help lazy eyes!

The medical condition amblyopia, or 'lazy eye', where one eye works harder then the other, is caused by the brain recognising the 'lazy eye' as being inferior, which in turn slowly makes it redundant so only the good eye is used. The problem with such a condition is not so much that the lazy eye is indeed 'lazy', but that as time gradually passes the neural connection between eye and brain is weakened through lack of use. This, in turn, could cause blindness in the amblyopic eye.

The treatment for such a problem has in the past been to wear a patch over the good eye, forcing the lazy one to work harder. More than 400 hours of patch wearing is needed before any real improvement can be detected. However, patching is not all it's cracked up to be. The patient might report a small amount of improvement in his/her lazy eye; but this improvement could be cancelled out by double vision resulting from the eyes not working together.

To combat such effects, which anyone else might put down to being partially intoxicated, researchers at Nottingham University have found that using virtual reality (VR) forces the 'lazy eye' to be active and for both eyes to work together.

So VR as well as being tons of fun can also have health benefits. "Fantastic!" I hear you cry. Well it sounds great, but is it truly VR in the strict sense? In a way it is: the patient is hooked up to the equipment and images flash in front of the eyes, creating the sense of a virtual reality. The difference is that where virtual reality is trying to create something realistic, researchers in Nottingham University create something unrealistic by bombarding each eye with a slightly different image. The eyes have to work together to understand it.