Playing the video game Tetris has been put forth as a treatment for sufferers of amblyopia, a vision impairment more well known as lazy eye, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology.
Researchers studied 18 adults with lazy eye. They put a pair of goggles on the participants, which allowed one eye to see the falling blocks in the game and the other eye to see only the blocks accumulating on the ground. The group showed significant improvement in eye-to-eye coordination.
"We have started to think about the condition in a completely different way," said lead author Dr. Robert Hess. "The reason why the eye isn't working is not because it is lazy, it is because it is actively stopped from working by the signals from the sighted eye in the brain."
In the past, doctors have relied on patching—that is, covering up the good eye to force the lazy one to work more—to treat the malady; however, the failures of the treatment are well documented.
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