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VR Treatment for Lazy Eye 169

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the eye-am-the-greatest dept.
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."
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VR Treatment for Lazy Eye More

VR Treatment for Lazy Eye

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  • 0o (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ExE122 ( 954104 ) * on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @03:47PM (#15012700) Homepage Journal
    One thing this article doesn't mention is the age of the patients. I know the amblyopia can be treated more easily when caught at an early age, when the eye is still maturing. So I think this would be an important factor to note in their statistics. A friend of mine had lazy eye when he was younger and was successfully treated with a week of wearing an eye patch and some atropine drops. But I'm thinking it would take a little more than that to help out Thom Yorke and Dr. Evil.

    I'm also curious as to what type of amblyopia this treats. Is the treatment equally effective for lazy eye caused by nearsight, farsight, astygmatism, and strabismus? If so, couldn't this also become a treatment for any of those on their own? I'm slightly nearsighted, and my optomotrist explained it to me as my eyes being too lazy to focus correctly. I wonder if I could just give them a little VR workout every now and then to beef them up...

    Is there an eye doctor in the house?

    --
    "Man Bites Dog
    Then Bites Self"
    • I can finally get rid of this eyepatch!
      • Keep it around for September 19th [talklikeapirate.com]!

      • Re:0o (Score:3, Interesting)

        by fshalor ( 133678 )
        That eye-patch treatment started a downward spiral in both eyes which has me with:
        1. a bad perscription in both eyes
        2. loss of color definition in my left (good) eye
        3. inability to wear contacts for extended periods
        4. occasional eye twitches in lazy eye when overused
        5. inability to use right eye in viewfinders, sights, etc. (have to shoot rifles left handed)

        As soon as the treatment was over, I went from 20/20 to loosing my distance vision. I never got back the color response in my left (good) eye. now.

        The o

    • Re:0o (Score:2, Informative)

      by cornface ( 900179 )
      and my optomotrist explained it to me as my eyes being too lazy to focus correctly.

      Start here [quackwatch.org].

    • Re:0o (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dairyland.Net ( 547845 )
      One of my sons has amblyopia. I recall that at age 2 there is something like a 98% chance of correcting it, and by age 9 there is a 2% chance. He tried the patch for quite a while with little improvement. A different doctor then had him get rid of the patch and had him use some drops in the 'good' eye instead. These drops would numb the focusing of the 'good' eye and allow the 'bad' eye to strengthen more by doing more work. It worked great!! He is now 12, long done with the treatment, and although hi
      • I believe the patching age has changed to a later age (sorry, don't recall the exact age but think it was closer to 18). My son went through a period of patching from approximately age 7 to age 9 and the doctor declared that his eyes were even. A later visit around age 11 showed that it had deteriorated between my son's yearly visits as well as screening at the school and the pediatricians office. Based on that, I'm pretty convinced that he can still have it corrected and we're back to patching again. I
        • i had surgery done to correct mine when i was 12 im 20 now from what i understood at the time was they took the muscle and folded it then stitched it to bring my eye to center man just thinking about that makes me head hurt all over again i had a migrain for a week after that and when ever i tryed to move my eye for 2 weeks
          • I wish it was that simple for my son. Dealing with patching for a pre-teen is not exactly easy on my wife and I as he does't want to wear a patch. My son's amblyopia is not muscular but rather that his brain just wired itself to use one eye over the other. In his case, surgery is not an option, I almost wish it was the case. We already enforce that he watch TV, play video games, and use the computer while patching. I'd love to convert the hundreds of hours patching into hours. I can't let my son excee
      • If anyone was curious, those drops are most likely atropine.
      • A different doctor then had him get rid of the patch and had him use some drops in the 'good' eye instead. These drops would numb the focusing of the 'good' eye and allow the 'bad' eye to strengthen more by doing more work. It worked great!!

        Did you get a refund from the first doctor?

        It worries me sometimes that with the cost of health care, there is little assurance that there is any quality to it. I've had to go to multiple doctors in the past or have paid doctors to fix something and they either didn't o

    • Re:0o (Score:4, Interesting)

      by EggyToast ( 858951 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @04:03PM (#15012852) Homepage
      It seems like the treatment simply addresses strength problems between the eyes. If poor vision caused the eyes to have different strength, then I don't see why not. Obviously you would have to wear contacts or have the vision in each eye corrected before using this method.

      But definitely it would be easier to be done at an early age, as after puberty there's really no way to easily create neural pathways to the brain. It's the same reason why it's easy for kids to learn languages, yet more difficult for adults. I'm sure it could assist amblyopia in adults, but it would probably be impossible to cure it.

      But if your eyes individually are having problems, then I don't think this treatment would address that. It seems to focus on differences between the eyes, versus any inherent weakness in a single eye individually.

    • Re:0o (Score:3, Interesting)

      by outsider007 ( 115534 )
      they way my eye doctor explained it to me, the pathways between your eye and brain are softwired until you're 7 or 8, and after that there's no way to correct it.
    • Very little can be done for lazy eye past the age of eight or so. By then, your brain is already set on how it's going to use that eye. I'd love to see a cure for my right eye's ambliopa, but I don't think it's gonna happen.

    • Re:0o (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      As an Optometrist, i am very sceptical... the Tool could be nice to use in the treatment but you don't make the brain work that fast. the result may be short lived. All the previous points are accurate. Age has a LARGE factor as well as the underlying cause.

    • Is there an eye doctor in the house?

      No, but ever since I watched the Simpsons, I know that a lazy eye can be cured by wearing thick-rimmed glasses for two weeks. Oh, and while you're at it, also rub some medicated salve into your scalp to cure your dry skin and wear clunky shoes to fix your fallen arches.

    • I'm not a doctor, but my understanding is that nearsightedness and farsightedness are caused by problems with the how your eye's lens changes its shape. This may not entirely be the case seeing as this was taught in a psychology class while explaining how the human eye's rods and cones work, but who knows, it may be right.

    • Re:0o (Score:3, Interesting)

      by smellsofbikes ( 890263 )
      I'm not an eye doctor but my girlfriend is. I'll try and sum up what I've learned. Farsightedness and nearsightedness are both problems with the lens or cornea's radius of curvature (not enough or too much); astigmatism is a problem with the lens or cornea having two different radii of curvature -- in other words, it's somewhere between hemispherical and cylindrical, so you have a major axis and a minor axis of curvature. Imagine an elliptic lens, basically. Amblyopia is, to the best of my knowledge, a
      • I *have* this very problem... I was cross-eyed when I was young, at 7 (almost too late) I was able to get the operation to un-cross my eyes, they moved muscles around on my left eye (I think) Then for a long time I went with an eyepatch on my good eye and I used a "ViewMaster" (round cardboard disks with small pictures in a binocular looing thing)with special disks for excercice. My Dad made slides with colored lines and shapes.

        Anyway my right eye is still much more capable than my left. Looking at the same
        • That sucks: I'm sorry to hear about that. I've read about incredibly abused children who are kept in dark closets for their first six years and they grow up basically blind because their brains don't correctly develop the areas that work with vision. To a lesser extent the same thing goes with language: the brain forms areas that deal with the fundamentals of hearing and speech. (That's why it's much harder to learn a language as an adult than as a young child.)

          A lot of people in your situation seem to b
    • A friend of mine had lazy eye when he was younger and was successfully treated with a week of wearing an eye patch and some atropine drops.

      Huh? I think you are confused. That is what you usually do after the operation to shorten the muscle which actually does help amblyopia.

      I had the operation when I was nine years old, and it was fairly serious. My daughter had the operations when she was 2, and that was outpatient. Obviously surgical techniques have improved as well, but the fact is that it is not amblyop
  • Nothing for you to see here. Please learn to make better use of your non-dominant eye.

  • You clod! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 )
    I only have one eye, you insensitive clod!

  • yes (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'd stay skeptical of such a claim until there is a peer-reviewed paper out.

    Yeah, I'd have to see it to believe it.

  • This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @03:50PM (#15012742)
    I knew about this way back in the mid 90s when I was working with stereoscopic LCD shutter glassses. Forcing both eyes to work at the same rate corrects the problem of one eye being favored. The down side is that untill your eyes are corrected you will be NASTY head aches from using such devices.
    • What's your point? The article talks about utilizing VR to treat it. Did those glasses display playable video games? TFA didn't claim a breakthrough treatment style, just a more enjoyable, possibly faster way to correct things. Hell, I think everyone would be happier if more treatments involved having to play video games! That's what's newsworthy.

  • Umm so what does this mean? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Bikini babes for the strong eye and Pr0n for the weak?

  • Well done! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @03:52PM (#15012762) Homepage Journal
    It's always nice to see a growing technology such as the much-hyped "virtual reality" used to do good beyond it's years as a fantastically annoying, overused buzzword.

    Given the timeframe, I guess it'll be ten years or so before a "blog" or a "podcast" is used to cure something.
    • I suppose that's because VR has been dead as a buzzword for quite a while. I actually don't remember hearing it in marketing since the failed Nintendo Gameboy VR thingy and by then it's trendy use was waning in existence anyway.

      By their trendy nature, these words go in and out of fashion and marketers like to jump to a new set of words that hasn't built up resistance from their audience yet. The art of selling.

      Remember when the term "clicks-n-mortar" was still being used? I suspect "podcasts" and "blogs"

  • Virtual Reality (Score:5, Funny)

    by BigZaphod ( 12942 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @03:54PM (#15012773) Homepage
    Too bad VR can't cure Lazy Person. I seem to be quite badly infected with it...
  • ...had my eyes not been too lazy to read it.

  • that's nice (Score:3, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @03:55PM (#15012786)
    That's nice. Let me know when they find a way to fix lazy butt.

  • somewhat related company (Score:4, Informative)

    by outcast36 ( 696132 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @03:57PM (#15012803) Homepage
    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.
    • I am not an optometrist, but my rough understanding from a bunch of neuroscience talks in grad school is that vision is sort of pipelined, where there are a series of processing phases. One stage looks for lines (vertical, horizontal, diagonal) while the next responds to shapes formed by these lines (circle, square, ect...) and the next recognizes complex patterns composed of shapes, like faces. Movement and color gets factored in somewhere. Incidentally, the research into this partly done by strapping l
  • Does that mean that the lazy eyes will also both point straight? They are also talking about the eyes getting "stronger" I see. Does that mean that if we focus hard, our eyes will get stronger? What's this mean for lasik surgery! OMG!
    • Different areas.

      Focusing is to do with the lens and the cornea. As far as I am aware there is no way of repairing that fault with exercises.

      Lazy eye is caused by the brain essentially cutting out falty information being recieved from one eye and ultimately forgetting about it altogether. Exercises (and originally eyepatches) would force the brain to get it up and running again.
  • "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."

    I'll keep my eyes peeled.

  • Much simpler solution from 30 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @03:59PM (#15012820) Homepage
    There's a much simpler solution from about thirty years ago. The patient is given polarized glasses with different polarization axes for each eye, and a matching screen with two polarizers to be placed in front of a TV. This turns TV viewing into an eye exercise. Cheap and simple.

  • As a strabismus sufferer... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nvrrobx ( 71970 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @04:00PM (#15012828) Homepage
    ...I'd be interested to see if this actually pans out. Patching is what caused my lazy eye to become as bad as it is.

    I've had corrective surgery for my strabismus three times, and each time has made significant improvements, but most of my vision still comes from my one good eye. I'm one of the lucky ones - I have a good null point, so my eyes don't bounce all the time. I can drive just fine. :)

    BTW, the medical term for lazy eye is actually occular nystagmus.

    • FTFA: Because the amblyopic eye is inferior for some reason, the brain decides to use the good eye.

      ...but most of my vision still comes from my one good eye.

      Which leads to my question: Has your overall vision improved?
      I'm thinking that, if your brain is using one eye because the other is inferior for whatever reason, then doing anything to use both eyes would decrease your overall quality of your vision. Although, it sounds like that the "bad" eye was being corrected so that your vision would improve,

      • In my case (as is the case with some other strabismus sufferers), both eyes are physically good. Strabismus is a condition where your eyes are crossed severely. In my case, my eyes pointed directly at my nose when I was born. My brain shut down most of the input from the right eye because it was confusing. Unfortunately, being as my issue is neurological, the opthamologists haven't come up with a way to correct it.

        My vision has improved over the years, but I will never have fantastic depth perception.
    • BTW, the medical term for lazy eye is actually occular nystagmus.

      I don't think that's right. There are different, subjective ways to characterize a "lazy eye," but amblyopia is what "lazy eye" means to optometrists. At least, this is what my last optometrist told me.

      Also, Wikipedia's entry for "lazy eye" [wikipedia.org] goes to amblyopia.

    • i Hate my eyes.. they will randomly switch dominance..

      this is why am good at shooting left or right handed.. i just focus for a min and now that eye is the dominant one.

      it is quite annoying when they randomly switch on their own
    • BTW, the medical term for lazy eye is actually occular nystagmus.

      The medical term for lazy eye is Amblyopia [preventblindness.org]. Ocular nystagmus is an involuntary twitching of the eye (IANAD, but my daughter has a related eye condition called Leber's [tsbvi.edu]).

  • Hum, that's not too good, if this proves to be really effective then the media and the mass won't be too happy to find out that games can be good for your health. I wonder what Jack Johnson would think of this :)

  • The old method couldn't be much worse (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ianscot ( 591483 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @04:05PM (#15012869)

    Any more direct method that was at all effective couldn't help but be a dramatic improvement over eye patches for hours a day.

    The Docs consulted prescribed the usual regimen of eye patches and so on for my daughter as a quite young child. I can say from experience that it's not easy to get a child of that age -- and treatment when young was strongly preferable -- to live with the patch. Even when she wasn't particularly annoyed by it, we were dealing with something on the level of brushing your teeth in a little kid. My parenting skills weren't up to the task, and our treatment was hit and miss.

    Eventually my daughter's lazy eye has come around by itself, more or less. I'd much rather have been able to intervene with a more active measure, though.

  • I have a non-muscular lazy eye and after reading the article I'm still convinced this is just for the younger set, Age 12, when the recommend patching the good idea to force the weak eye to work harder. Unfortunately I was only taken to an eye doctor at the age of about 12 so the patching never really worked for me. I'd be surprised of this would actually do anything for the older set.
    • I don't know. 20 year olds can wear glasses that make everything upsidedown for a few weeks (they are basically taped on and mask out anything that isn't being flipped upside down) and when they take them off normal looks upside down for a few weeks.
  • > I'd stay skeptical of such a claim until there is a peer-reviewed paper out."

    I'm going to hold out for the report that rebunks *that* paper in another 5 years or so.

  • Not new.. (Score:1, Funny)

    by turtleAJ ( 910000 )
    This isn't new at all...

    I've been doing this for years...

    On a night out, I keep one eye on my girlfriend's eyes, and another one scans the room...
    • What are you talking about? Slashdotter's don't have girlfriends!

      While we're on it, I get practice by keeping one eye on my mountain dew can, and the other watching to see when gentoo finishes installing...
  • I'd stay skeptical of such a claim until there is a peer-reviewed paper out

    I think you're demanding the unreasonable. It's a pain in the ass to peer when you have lazy eye.
  • My brother has a turned eye, which he had as a kid, not done much about in between, and has made a come back in his early 30s.

    What I find interesting about this is the concept of treatment delivered through a game. Its damm annoying to have to have one eye covered by a patch, and with too many of your mates saying "ah-hahaha" and singing sea shanties, its not really so much fun either. It seems to deliver the treatment in a much more palatable fashion, and so more effective.

  • VR? Bah! Pong!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by mmurphy000 ( 556983 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @04:25PM (#15012990)
    My brother helped correct his lazy eye when he was young via a classic Pong game, just by playing with his good eye patched. VR is for whippersnappers with big budgets... :-)

  • Isn't that what causes dupes on slashdot?? There's a cure now??

  • First hand experience. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Eric Damron ( 553630 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @04:32PM (#15013038)
    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.

    It's really a weird condition. I can force myself to see out of my lazy eye but normally I don't. For example when I read I only see the words in my good eye and if I try to read with my lazy eye it's like I can see the words but can't recognize them. Weird. The last time I took an eye exam to renew my driver's license they had one of those machines that shows different letters to each eye. I read off the line I saw and the officer asked "Are you blind in one eye?" I said "No, why" and he said "Because you read every other letter." I didn't even see the letters being shown to my lazy eye.
    • 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 correc
      • I was diagnosed at 16 years old or so, and they told me I was too old for treatment. It took me several years of effort, but I finally managed to get to the point where my eyes now focus together more often than not.

        When I was 20, I couldn't read with my left eye closed. Now (at 30), I can. Depth perception is a useful tool folks - don't give up on it without a fight!

  • skeptical and lazy (Score:2, Informative)

    by 0xDAVE ( 770415 )
    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]

  • Left eye, right eye (Score:4, Interesting)

    by syntap ( 242090 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @04:37PM (#15013079)
    I wish there was a quick way to change your eye-edness. I am right handed but left-eyed, and tasks that require aiming (like darts, shooting, etc) are handicapped.
    • At least your not left-eared! I can't sing on key for the life of me!
    • have you not watched firebirds?

      Tommy Lee Jones gies you the way to correct this

      1. put panties on your head covering the eye you do not want to be dominant.
      2. Over other place a periscope
      3. now get in Jeep
      4. Drive around like this until you drive normally
    • I wish there was a quick way to change your eye-edness.

      It's not quick, but practice can fix this. Switch your primary focus from one eye to the other. Objects at different depths are good for this. After a while you'll find that you can switch almost instantly (say, half a second either way) and maintain which eye is primary at will. It's the same thing that's required to switch which hand your write with, or which foot you kick with.
    • I wish there was a quick way to change your eye-edness. I am right handed but left-eyed, and tasks that require aiming (like darts, shooting, etc) are handicapped.

      I'm right handed and left eyed as well. Not to many people know their "eye-edness".

      I was told that hitting a baseball is the only advantage to being cross hand-eye dominant. Makes sense.

      The real funny thing is that I'm about as good at darts with my eyes closed as with them open. Try it, you'll be surprised. The dart board never moves, so visi
    • I am right handed but left-eyed, and tasks that require aiming (like darts, shooting, etc) are handicapped.

      Aye, me too, and it's because of corrective measures when I was a small child. Born cross-eyed and various kinds of blurry, they patched and put drops in my over-dominant right eye. I sometimes wonder if I told them when to stop, and no-one listened.

      Now my left eye is dominant, but reverts if I'm really tired, which makes for some interesting vision. The worst is trying to play pool: my chin just ge

    • By the way, for those who are wondering how you test right-eye, left-eye, do this:

      - Go outside
      - Find a light pole or other large ovject at least fifteen or twenty feet away.
      - With both eyes open, extend your arm so your thumb is on the object... hold it there
      - Now shut right eye and keep left open, then shut left eye and keep right eye open.
      - The single eye still showing your thumb over the object is your dominant eye. The non-dominant eye will show your thumb next to the object.

      This is why cross-dominance

  • I've got it (Score:2, Insightful)

    by esemplastic ( 566951 ) *
    Last week when I got new glasses, my eye doctor told me that the reason they can't really correct my vision in my left eye is not because of a defect, but rather because I have "lazy eye" ... my vision wasn't corrected when I was young, and now my brain basically ignores input from that eye - the neuronal connections weren't fully formed. My eye doesn't drift to the side or anything like that (in fact, I had no idea about this condition until my eye exam last week, and I'm 30 years old).

    So anyway, rad - I'm
    • I am not sure about this new treatment, but I would say that you are too old. The reason current treatments work is because they force the developing brain and eye to work together. But after one reaches a certain age and development completes, this cannot be done.
    • My lazy eye wasn't diagnosed until I was 18 or so, at which point I was told nothing could be done about it, because I was too old. Once I actually understood the problem, and made an effort to use both eyes on a regular basis, I actually gotr quite a lot better.

      I still have problems with one eye drifting, especially when I'm tired, but I now have stereo vision more often than not. It's pretty cool, actually.

  • Well done ;) (Score:3, Funny)

    by loconet ( 415875 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @05:05PM (#15013268) Homepage
    "but I'd stay skeptical of such a claim until there is a peer-reviewed paper out"

    And that my friends is a professional /. submitter. Anticipating the "that claim is bs! there is no peer-review!" comments. Well executed.

  • See? Video games really do improve eye coordination!

  • I'm doubly-lazy! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by duffhuff ( 688339 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @05:23PM (#15013383)
    I think I actually have two lazy eyes, probably brought on at an early age by nearsightedness and / or astigmatism. I believe the explanation I recieved was that the muscles on one side of the eye are stronger then the other side, and the eye gets pulled out of alignment in certain situations. I had surgury on one eye to mitigate the effects, but I still have the symptoms which cause all kinds of wierd effects for me, as I will try to explain.

    I can, at will, cause either one of my eyes to break convergence and look somewhere else and then alternate which eye is lazy by "looking" out the other eye. That "lazy" eye will then start looking outward and I'll get double vision, but how noticable it is depends on how out-of-whack my eye convergence is (I can also control how much convergence I loose, so I can go from slight, almost overlapping double vision, to nearly completely different viewpoints). If I'm looking at something to the extreme right or left I usually end up looking with just one eye, but I don't notice the double-vision for some reason. I've since learned to physically turn my head / body towards what I'm looking at since that makes it physically possible for me to look at something with both eyes. Another trick I use is to look at something with my "outside eye" (i.e. if I'm looking at something to my right, I will look at it with my left eye, visa-versa if looking left). I'm not sure if that makes sense to anyone, but AFAIK, most people should be able to "look" through either of their eyes at will. Over time, I've managed to adapt my behaviour so that most of the time these symptoms don't occur.

    The most dangerous downsides to all this is that when I get extremely tired, or very drunk, I can no longer keep my eyes converged and normal vision becomes impossible. Nothing short of intensely focusing on a high-contrast area (say, the sharp edge of a table) will bring convergence back. However, I'm not sure if this happens because of my lazy eyes, or if it happens to other people. Driving while tired is extremely dangerous for me, especially at night, since I loose all sense of depth perception when I get double-vision and I suddenly have no idea which lane I'm in or where I'm headed.

    One interesting aspect about all this is that if I cover one eye then I can no longer get this behaviour to happen, which has saved me a few times during extremely boring lectures! Something about looking with both eyes causes the trouble.

  • Dupe! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rorschach1 ( 174480 ) on Tuesday March 28, 2006 @05:27PM (#15013419) Homepage
    Lazy /. editors! The same article was posted right there in the left-hand column!

    Err, never mind..

  • i have amblyopia in my left eye and had it treated when i was 4 (am now 24), and there is also some astigmatism. additionally, that eye is far-sighted, while the right eye is near-sighted. it's still not corrected and i wonder sometimes if it ever will be. i cannot do anything with my left eye because it is so weak. i hope that someday this type of treatment will be a viable option as it's really a very annoying problem to have.

  • Re:0o (Score:2, Informative)

    by docneuro ( 849457 )
    Is there an eye doctor in the house?
    ---
    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 v
  • I have amblyopia and I often wonder what the value is in having both eyes work together if one is inferior (and can't be corrected). The brain is ignoring the bad eye for a reason. The images just don't match up. What purpose does it serve to force your brain to match the images up? Is it cosmetic? Does it not reduce the overall quality of vision? Seem to for me.

    -matthew
  • My optometrist (well known in my area) told me that the reason why my left eye is lazy is because I have a cornea in my left eye. I've had this in my left eye since childhood. I asked him clearly what could be done, and he said after childhood, you really can't fix a lazy eye. Before childhood, a lazy eye can be trained and improved, but not so in adulthood. My optometrist told me there was nothing wrong with a lazy eye, especially at my age, and that I should just learn to deal with it (and take care o
  • I don't see why one should be so skeptical of the claims (other than being skeptical of *any* claim to a certain degree). Targeted training by computer can be incredibly effective. I remember in high school, having to learn huge lists of authors and the books they wrote; it just wouldn't stick with me. So I wrote a little program on my Z-80 box, that quizzed me, focusing heavily upon the ones I had trouble with. It was amazing how such a simple tool, that focused upon my mental weaknesses, kicked me int

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