Prescription Video Games
Written by Erica Wang
Edited by Priya Ram
May 2, 2021
Edited by Priya Ram
May 2, 2021
Imagine finishing your doctor’s appointment and walking down to the pharmacy to pick up your prescription video games. Recent research has shown certain video games to be a promising new treatment for amblyopia, commonly known as lazy eye. As exciting as this seems, medical professionals and psychologists are still deciding if the benefits of this treatment are worth the risk of video game addiction. Researchers wrote about the pros and cons of this new treatment in their paper [1].
Amblyopia is a neurodevelopmental disease that affects approximately 3-5% of preschoolers in the United States and causes the brain to favor one eye over the other [2]. This can happen when vision becomes blurry from near-sightedness or far-sightedness, the eyes do not move in sync, or cataracts develop. The eye with stronger vision will suppress the input of the weaker eye which can eventually lead to severe impairment and even blindness in the weaker eye [3-6]. Typical treatment for amblyopia in children under the age of 7 would be using an eye patch on the strong eye to retrain the brain to use the weaker eye. This has a failure rate of 15-50% and will only increase once the child is over the age of 10, the age that vision is fully mature [7-16]. Perceptual learning can be used for adults with amblyopia, which includes tasks like determining the difference in letter size and color, but it is often tedious and boring to complete [17].
Video games are the opposite of boring and a version of Tetris®️ has shown promising results for patients with amblyopia. One study had patients play Tetris®️ with a patch covering the strong eye for two hours per day, over the course of 20 days. This resulted in a recovery rate that was five times faster than that of just wearing a patch [18]. Another option is to play a version of Tetris®️ with special goggles or glasses that can adjust the clarity of gameplay depending on which eye is stronger and by how much. A clearer image will be seen by the lazy eye, and since both eyes need to work together to play this puzzle game, the brain is forced to use visual input from both the weak and strong eye [19].
It is not all fun and games, as video game addiction is becoming more prevalent. Although there has yet to be a clinical definition for video game addiction, the common criteria in several definitions is that individuals with this addiction show negative changes in mood and social life, and continue to play excessively even when they recognize these changes. It has been linked to social anxiety, self-esteem issues, sleeplessness, and decreased SAT scores and GPA [20-26]. Different genres of games can cause different effects. Violent video games can increase aggression while co-op games can increase empathy and altruistic behavior [27-29]. Why are video games so addictive? It is the combination of satisfaction, competition, escapism, and online gaming communities that appeal to many gamers [30]. Gamers spend hours perfecting a certain move or completing a complex level to impress their peers.
While parents may be quick to judge video games, and though they can be harmful when played excessively, they should not be dismissed as a treatment for amblyopia and other diseases.
Reference List
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