Researchers at the University of California have created a new iPad app, called UltimEyes, which provides human brain with visual exercise and is capable of training the pair of eyes for better eyesight.
Researchers examined the vision of California baseball players and found how a visual training program helps the brain work harder and visualise better, thus helping the players succeed in the game.
Players were recruited to participate in the examination by Aaron Seitz, the lead study author. Athletes were asked to indentify several visual patterns through the use of iPad for about 25 minutes every day, four days a week and for a period of about two months.
Certain pattern became dimmer, thereby testing for players' ability to use their vision in search of the correct patterns. After 30 sessions of using the app, the players' vision were found to have improved by 31 percent, much better than the normal 20/20 vision. The participants even played better with their improved vision.
Researchers explained that visual cortex is the area of the brain that controls eyesight, which breaks down the arriving information into patterns called Gabor Stimuli. The new app technology is meant to directly deal with the eyes. The patterns can help the brain train better with greater clarity of farsighted objects.
"The goal of the program is to train the brain to better respond to the inputs that it gets from the eye. As with most other aspects of our function, our potential is greater than our normative level of performance. When we go to the gym and exercise, we are able to increase our physical fitness; it's the same thing with the brain. By exercising our mental processes we can promote our mental fitness" said Seitz in a press release.
"The demonstration that seven players reached 20/7.5 acuity-the ability to read text at three times the distance of a normal observer-is dramatic and required players to stand forty feet back from the eye chart in order to get a measurement of their vision," Seitz added.
The details of the study have been published in the Current Biology journal.
