Doctors Say Tetris Could Fix Lazy Eye

The condition commonly known as lazy eye has an official medical name, amblyopia. However, most people know what lazy eye is, it's a medical condition where one eye doesn't move in the same manner as the other, and it can lead to vision loss. Canadian doctors believe they found a new way to treat lazy eye and it involves playing the video game Tetris.

Researchers at McGill University discovered that Tetris could help train both eyes to work in unison. The researchers conducted a small study involving 18 adults who played the game instead of using traditional treatments. Traditional treatments involve covering the good eye to make the weak eye work harder.

The researchers discovered that playing Tetris was more effective than using that traditional patch treatment. The team now wants to test if playing the video game can also help treat the condition in children. The experiment the researchers used involved a special pair of video goggles making both eyes work as a team.

Nine volunteers that suffered from lazy eye wore the goggles for an hour a day over a two-week period while playing Tetris. The special goggles used allowed one eye to see blocks falling down the screen and the other can only see the blocks that accumulate on the ground. Another group of nine used for comparison in the experiment more similar goggles, but had the good eye covered with a patch and viewed the game using only the lazy eye. At the end of the two-week period, the group use both eyes had better improvement in their vision than the group that used the patch.

[via BBC]