amblyopia

Why eye doctors may soon prescribe Tetris

For the roughly three percent of the population that suffers from amblyopia, or "lazy eye," the best current treatment option -- covering the stronger eye to force the weaker one into better behavior -- works only some of the time in kids and has been totally ineffective in adults.

Now researchers out of McGill University in Montreal say that playing Tetris may ultimately treat the disorder in adults because the puzzle video game trains the eyes to work together as information is distributed across them in a complementary fashion.

"The key to improving vision for adults, who … Read more

The 404 1,054: Where we're gonna need to see some ID (podcast)

This Friday, 25 bars and restaurants around the San Francisco Bay Area will adopt Scenetap, a social analytics app that uses facial recognition technology to gather real-time data on customer relations and crowd sizes. Don't worry, the cameras only analyze facial features to determine approximate age and gender of clients entering the bars, and the restaurants swear that they won't upload videos of patrons stumbling out and doing whatever people do outside of bars at 4 a.m.… Read more

Lazy eye? Playing video games might help

Those with a condition commonly referred to as lazy eye may soon be assigned video game therapy, thanks to results of a new study published in the August issue of the journal PLoS Biology.

Participants in the UC Berkeley study who spent at least 40 hours playing off-the-shelf video games throughout the course of the study enjoyed better visual acuity and 3D depth perception scores than prior to playing the games. (Don't get too excited; these improvements have not been seen in people with normal vision.)

"This study is the first to show that video game play is … Read more