Restore 3D vision with video games

I’ve never been particularly interested in playing video games. Considering the fact that they can sometimes lead to addiction and/or violence, it actually makes me question whether or not they are best left alone, at least for young children. On the flip side, though, are the potential positives that games can bring to the table.

As it turns out, playing the right video games may actually help you improve brain function, lose weight, and…restore 3D vision for people with a lazy eye? If you had to read that last part twice, you aren’t alone. A study performed at McGill University has found that playing video games with both eyes can dramatically improve vision in adults with lazy eye, which is a condition that was thought to be all but untreatable in adults, according to a CBCNews article.

Lazy eye, also known as amblyopia, is an eye disorder characterized by impaired vision in an eye that otherwise appears normal. This is a condition that is estimated to affect 1% to 5% of the global population. Those with the condition have limited depth perception and hence cannot judge distances as well as people with normal vision.

With the new treatment developed by a team led by Robert Hess, director of the opthalmology research department at McGill and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, vision in the weaker eye of someone with lazy eye drastically improves, and rather quickly. Here’s how they did it:

They chose the game of Tetris, a game that can only be played effectively using both eyes. By splitting the image between eyepieces of head-mounted goggles, one eye sees the falling pieces and the other eye sees pieces already fitted at the bottom of the screen. After playing Tetris for an hour a day for two weeks (that’s a lot of Tetris!), nine adults with lazy eye showed vast improvement in the vision of the weaker eye and in their 3D depth perception.

Rather cool stuff, if you ask me, but I can’t say for certain whether or not I’ll be playing Tetris any time soon.

Image processing is all in the mind?

If you are anything like me, you probably gave out one or two video games as presents to some of your younger relatives over the holiday season. If you did, however, you ought to be aware of the danger involved, and the potential repercussions of your actions.

Apparently, according to research carried out by academics in the UK and Sweden, some video game players are becoming so immersed in their virtual gaming environments that -- when they stop playing -- they transfer some of their virtual experiences to the real world.

That's right. Researchers led by Angelica Ortiz de Gortari and Professor Mark Griffiths from Nottingham Trent University's International Gaming Research Unit, and Professor Karin Aronsson from Stockholm University, have revealed that some gamers experience what they call "Game Transfer Phenomena" (GTP), which results in them doing things in the real world as if they were still in the game!

Extreme examples of GTP have included gamers thinking in the same way as when they were gaming, such as reaching for a search button when looking for someone in a crowd and seeing energy boxes appear above people's heads.

Aside from the game players, though, I wonder if this research might also have some implications for software developers working in the vision systems business, many of whom also work long hours staring at computer screens, often taking their work home with them.

How many of these individuals, I wonder, also imagine that they are performing image-processing tasks when going about their daily routine? Have you, for example, ever believed that you were performing a hyperspectral analysis when considering whether or not to purchase apples in the supermarket, optical character recognition to check the sell-by date on the fruit, or even a histogram equalization on the face of the attractive young lady at the checkout line?

While Professor Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University, said that he found that intensive gaming may lead to negative psychological, emotional, or behavioral consequences, the same might hold true for those of us who spend too much time at work developing image-processing software.

Thank goodness, then, that we will soon be able to look forward to a few more days respite from our toils to celebrate the New Year.

Happy New Year.