For those who already subscribe to the podcasts of the BBC's technology programme Digital Planet (formerly Go Digital), you'll already know that a UK university is testing the use of video games for children who suffer from amblyopia, or "lazy eye". For the rest of you, you can "Listen Again" to last week's programme here.
Already videogames have been used to detect the condition, but according to Digital Planet, now researchers at the University of Nottingham are using games to treat it too. The hypothesis is that the interactivity of games is more effective than the traditional treatment (covering the amblopic eye with an eye patch), because the game stimulates the correct areas of both the affected optic nerve/eye muscles and the non-amblopic eye, thus requiring both eyes to work together.
