Lazy Eye? Play Tetris!

According to a recent article from BBC News, researchers at McGill University in Canada have reason to believe that playing tetris an hour a day while wearing special goggles can help treat lazy eye.  Their study, published in the scientific magazine Current Biology, involved a small sample of 18 adults who suffer from amblyopia or lazy eye.

One in 50 children suffers from amblyopia.  Amblyopia occurs when one eye develops less than the other.  It is often accompanied by a squint.  Also, both eyes don’t usually look in the same direction.  Without early detection and early treatment, children with amblyopia can permanently lose vision in their weak eye.  The current most popular treatment is to cover the strong eye with an eye patch so that the weak eye is forced to work harder.  The eye patch must be worn throughout the day for several months.  This can become rather frustrating.

The researchers propose a less frustrating and much more fun treatment: play Tetris for an hour while wearing special goggles.  The googles make sure that one eye can only see the falling blocks and the other can only see the blocks that have already been placed.  In this way, both eyes are forced to work together as a team to solve the puzzles.  As a control, the researchers had 9 participants wear an eye patch while playing Tetris.  At the end of two weeks, the group with the special goggles experienced more improvement with their vision than the group with eye patches.

The researchers believe that their approach is more effective, more enjoyable, and faster than eye patches.  Their results suggests that amblyopia is actually a two-eye problem and that patching the strong eye may actually hinder rather than help the weak one.  The researchers also believe that this treatment could be applied to games other than Tetris.

This is one of the coolest examples I’ve heard of games being transformative.  In class, we talked about transformative games for venting anger, socializing, exercising, and learning.  However, who would have thought that a game could help treat a health issue as complex as lazy eye?  Other researchers still need to replicate and verify the findings of this study.  However, if this treatment really does work, we may be seeing a few more Tetris players and few less pirates in our everyday lives.

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