If you thought playing video games is harmful to your vision, think again. A new study by researchers at University of Rochester says that playing high level action games actually sharpens the vision.

After conducting a month long test, the researchers were able to prove that students who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month saw their ability to identify letters presented in clutter increase by 20 percent. A similar kind of test is often used in regular ophthalmology clinics.

To start with, students were provided with a crowding test, which measured how well they could discern the orientation of a "T" within a crowd of other distracting symbols. They were then divided into two groups, one who played Unreal Tournament, a first-person shoot-'em-up action game, for roughly an hour a day while the second group played Tetris, a game equally demanding in terms of motor control, but visually less complex. 

After the end of a month, researchers once again held the tests and found that while the group that played Tetris showed no improvement on the test, those who played Unreal Tournament could tell which way the "T" was pointing much more easily than they had just a month earlier.

Says Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, "Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information. 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."

The researchers say that playing action video games not only improves the the part of the visual field where video game players typically play but also the peripheral vision. They believe that this type of test could be used on people with visual deficits, such as amblyopic patients, so that they will be able to gain an increase in their visual acuity with special rehabilitation software that reproduces an action game's need to identify objects very quickly.

"When people play action games, they're changing the brain's pathway responsible for visual processing. These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it. That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life", adds Bavelier.

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