VR Treatment for Lazy Eye

1point618 writes "According to an article at the BBC, scientist have found a new way to correct amblyopia, or lazy eye, using a virtual reality system. The system works by giving some stimuli to the good eye, but more important stimuli to the bad eye, making it work harder to get stronger while keeping both eyes in use so as not to produce double vision. Supposedly, the system will do in 1 hour what used to take 400 hours, but I'd stay skeptical of such a claim until there is a peer-reviewed paper out."

somewhat related company

[outcast36]

A somewhat related company is NovaVision [novavision.com]. I think they deal more with stroke patients though. (I am a computing nerd, not a nerd who tracks problems organic.) Their treatment was really more training for the brain though (specifically training a new part of the brain to handle vision). I'm also pretty sure they were FDA approved. It raises an intersting systems question though. Where does vision happen? Eye, brain, nervous system?

Good times for those of us with poor eyesight, and a hankering for wetware.

Anywho, I am not in any way related. Just droppin knowledge.

Re:0o

[cornface]

and my optomotrist explained it to me as my eyes being too lazy to focus correctly.

Start here [quackwatch.org].

skeptical and lazy

[0xDAVE]

I'd stay skeptical of such a claim until there is a peer-reviewed paper out. Perhaps you should look for one! A good place to start is here: http://www.virart.nott.ac.uk/ibit/ [nott.ac.uk]

Re:First hand experience.

[mckyj57]

I was diagnosed with amblyopia at the age five. They tried making me wear a patch over my good eye to force my bad eye to work harder but it was too late. Amblyopia must be caught at a VERY early age or nothing helps.

I must take issue with this, lest someone see it and stop trying for their
6-year-old. It is not nearly as easy to treat amblyopia at ages greater than
5, but it is definitely possible.

I had amblyopia and it was not caught until I was 8. I had the operation, and
did years of therapy. It did correct the problem for the most part. While I
still use one eye for reading, I do use both for distance vision -- and my
eyes do track together except when I am very tired.

Re:0o

[docneuro]

Is there an eye doctor in the house?
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I'm a neurologist, not an ophthalmologist, but perhaps I can help...

Amblyopia is a defect in the processing of visual spatial information that affects the visual pathways in the brain NOT the eye. It is developmental in that there is some problem in an eye from an early age that prevents proper binocular vision, for example a congenital cataract, or a problem aligning the two eyes, i.e,. weak muscles or strabismus.

What is thought to happen is that the brain's visual pathways, deprived of binocular input, do not form properly. Children, up to about the age of 9 are at risk for this, because this is when the brain areas are forming. You cannot develop amblyopia after this (approx) age. So if something happened to one normal adult eye even for a long time in a person without amblyopia, then the eye was fixed, there would again be normal binocular vision.

Conversely, if a kid develops amblyopia, then by the time they are an adult it is too late to fix it. Perhaps one can train the eyes to fuse better, but the problem in the brain's visual pathways will not improve.

The treatment of amblyopia is to try to get the visual system to combine information from both eyes, and particularly to work the "lazy" eye. The earlier this can be started, the better.
I agree that until the technique is published in a peer reviewed journal it should be suspect (I don't know if it is).
The treatment, in principle, should be useful no matter what the cause, BUT the problem causing the bad eye must be fixed first. Since the technique treats the brain and not the eye, it would not be at all useful for treating nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, etc. Those problems are treated glasses, etc. Strabismus or weak eye muscles, is one cause of amblyopia.
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I wonder if I could just give them a little VR workout every now and then to beef them up...
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Well, do you really want muscular bulgy eyes?
http://flatrock.org.nz/topics/animation/assets/and _one_more.jpg/ [flatrock.org.nz]