- A 20 Minute Computer Exercise 3 Times A Week Helps People
See More Clearly Even Though Myopia Is Unchanged, In A Pilot Study
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- Good eyesight is not about having the most perfectly-shaped
eyeballs or the most powerful contact lenses. It's about how hard your
brain works.
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- A trial here with 16 patients, all mildly shortsighted,
found that the brain can be trained to see sharper images without the aid
of glasses, contact lenses, drugs or surgery.
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- Dr Wei Rui Hua, 29, a researcher with the National University
of Singapore, was involved in this study.
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- She said: 'Before, I couldn't read the subtitles on a
TV programme if I sat 3m away. Now, the lines are sharper and I can read
the subtitles without spectacles.'
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- The pilot study, conducted jointly since March by the
Singapore Eye Research Institute (Seri) and the Defence Medical Research
Institute, uses the neural correction technology of NeuroVision, a medical
technology company based in Israel.
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- This is based on two decades of research on how the brain
sees. The researchers' work has been published in scientific journals such
as Nature.
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- 'You're training your brain to see clearly,' said Seri
director Donald Tan.
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- He used this analogy to explain how it works: 'You have
short legs and you can't run fast. But you can train the legs to go faster,
even though they are still short.
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- 'Likewise, there's still a deficiency in the optical
system, but you can just see better.'
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- Seri plans to go further and treat children and adults
with amblyopia, or 'lazy eye', a condition that affects as many as two
in every 100 people here and which was once thought to be untreatable.
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- In the pilot study done this year, the 16 people sat
about 1.5m away from a 17 inch computer screen in a dimly-lit room and
went through a 20 minute brain-stimulating visual exercise three times
a week.
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- Each was given a computer mouse with three buttons and
told to look out for certain images to be flashed on the screen.
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- For one type, they had to click on the right button when
they saw it; and for the other, the left button.
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- They did this wearing different kinds of glasses. The
exercises grew progressively more challenging and the 'correct' images
were sometimes fainter than others on the screen.
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- To start or stop the exercise, they clicked the middle
button.
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- Over two or three months, these exercises helped them
to see sharper images, though their myopia was unchanged.
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- In the study, more than three out of four showed remarkable
improvement. Starting with vision poorer than 6/12 as measured on a standard
eye-test chart, many finished close to 6/6 or perfect vision.
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- A second trial, in two stages and involving 360 people,
will start in January in two stages.
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- Copyright @ 2003 Singapore Press Holdings. All rights
reserved.
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- http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/techscience/story/0,4386,219181,00.html?
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