Studies show playing video games improve night blindness while driving
Video games have been getting a bad rap in recent years. Some have questioned the psychological impact of the violence found in many video games. However, according to one study, playing video games can improve your eyesight.
According to Cnet, a recent study has shown that adults who play action video games improve their eyesight in various areas. The biggest gain from playing action video games seems to be an improvement in contrast sensitivity. Normally a person would have to either get glasses or surgery in order to improve contrast sensitivity.
According to the Journal of Nature Neuroscience, playing video games could be beneficial for those with amblyopic (lazy eye) and night blindness for those who have difficulty driving in the dark. A professor at the University of Rochester stated, “But we’ve found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information more efficiently, and the improvements last for months after game play stopped.”
However, its not just any type of game that will improve your vision. According to the study, those who played shooters such as Call of Duty 2 and Unreal Tournament 2004 experienced an improvement in their vision. Those who played games such as Sims 2 experienced no improvement.
Some video games have even been banned in various countries due to the violent nature of the game. Grand Theft Auto is probably the poster child of what is considered to be an immorally violent video game. Despite all the criticism, it seems there is actually some benefit in playing such games.
It is a bit ironic that the only video games that can help improve vision are violent by nature. I suppose your eyes are like any other part of your body, with exercise improvements can be made. However, one has to weight the benefits of improving their vision to exposing themselves to video game violence.
January 2nd, 2011
Ok, let me begin this review by saying I love shooters and have been playing them ever since I was a kid and Wolfenstien was on PC. That evolved to Goldeneye on Nintendo 64. That all changed when Metal Gear Solid came out for PS1 and I now wanted a good story to go along with my gameplay. I have always kind of liked the COD world war series, but never got into it. When MW1 came out I was blown away, I loved the game and it had a good story to tell. My only complaint with MW2 was that the story was not only lacking, but down right stupid. I never got into multiplayer because I don’t have the time to train myself to compete with a bunch of 5th graders who spend 40 hours a week playing the game.
December 23rd, 2011
The reason shooters help (from a gamer’s standpoint) is that it causes you to react faster to your surroundings. This affects the eye because in order to have faster reflexes you need faster data processing, and that starts with the reception of data, the eyes.