Slaying hordes of bad guys, the more the better, in fast-paced video games improves vision, a study published Sunday showed for the first time.<\/p>\n
Far from being harmful to eyesight, as some had feared, action games such as Counter-Strike, Call of Duty, or Left 4 Dead provide excellent training for what eye doctors call contrast sensitivity, the study found.<\/p>\n
Contrast sensitivity is the ability to notice tiny changes in shades of grey against a uniform background, and is critical to everyday activities such as night driving and reading. It often degrades with age.<\/p>\n
The findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, reveal a previously unsuspected adaptability in the brain, and could open the way to new therapies, the researchers said.<\/p>\n
"This is not a skill that people were supposed to get better at by training," said Daphne Bavelier, a professor at the University of Rochester in New York state and the study’s lead researcher. <\/p>\n
"It was something that we corrected for at the level of the optics of the eye, to get better contrast detection you get glasses or laser surgery." <\/p>\n
"What we found is that even without this correction you can help your brain make better use of whatever information is received from your retina," she said in a phone interview.<\/p>\n
For the study, Bavelier and three colleagues conducted two sets of experiments. <\/p>\n
In the first, they compared the contrast sensitivity of hard-core action game players with video game aficionados of the same age who preferred less rapid-fire fare. <\/p>\n
In action games, players typically target and shoot figures that pop up suddenly on a computer screen.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that the action buffs were 50 percent more efficient at detecting contrast. <\/p>\n
But there remained a chicken-or-egg question: had their vision been improved by playing, or did they become action game players because they had better than average contrast sensitivity to start with?<\/p>\n
To find out, Bavelier asked two groups of non-action video game players to undergo 50 hours of training.<\/p>\n
One played a popular point-and-shoot game called Call of Duty, and the other played a game that offered a rich visual experience, but one bereft of action.<\/p>\n
"We found that the people in the first group improved by 43 percent, and the other group not at all," she said.<\/p>\n
As important, the study also found that the improvement was not transitory. "The positive effect remained months, even years after training, indicating long-lasting gains," she added.<\/p>\n
Is there some limit beyond which playing action games loses its positive effect or becomes detrimental? Can you, in other words, have too much of a "good thing"?<\/p>\n
"For your visual system, probably not. For your social life, perhaps," said Bavelier.<\/p>\n