US scientists have found that playing action video games regularly can improve vision.
A study by researchers at the University of Rochester showed that people who played action games for a few hours a day over the course of a month showed an improvement by around 20 per cent in their ability to identify the letters on the bottom line of a standard eye chart.
Researchers Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier tested college students who had played few, if any games. The students were divided into those who were given a shoot-em-up action game to play and those who played Tetris which is visually less complex.
The students had their eyes tested at the end of the study, with those playing action games scoring better during their eye examinations.
'Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information,' said Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. 'After just 30 hours players showed a substantial increase in the spatial resolution of their vision, meaning they could see figures like those on an eye chart more clearly, even when other symbols crowded in.'