You'll likely benefit from having a good eyesight if you're an athlete. Good vision is crucial in sports like golf, basketball and gymnastics because the ability to see better can translate into better performance and more wins. Fortunately, you do not have to look any further to give your eyesight a boost. A new study has found that simply using a special app on your iPad at least 25 minutes a day can help you develop superhuman vision.
In a new study "Improved vision and on-field performance in baseball through perceptual learning" published in the journal Current Biology, Feb. 17, researchers tested the vision of 19 baseball players from the University of California Riverside (UCR) and had them undergo an eye-training program, which involved using a specialized software known as ULTIMEYES that the participants used 25 minutes a day and four times a week.
ULTIMEYES, which was developed by California-based Carrot Neurotechnology, is similar to other tapping games on the iPad, but it uses small, low-contrast and blurry graphics. Unlike other programs for improving eyesight, this particular software does not also target the eye muscles but rather works by improving brain plasticity i.e. the brain's ability to modify its structure and function.
Two months later, the researchers retested the players' vision and found significant improvements in their vision. Some players experienced improved visual acuity from 20/20 to up to 20/7.5, which means they could see from a distance of 20 feet what someone with normal vision could not see beyond 7.5 feet away.
"We were using standard, on-the-wall eye charts," shared study author Aaron Seitz, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Riverside. "Normally, you stand 20 feet away, but our charts only measured down to 20/10 [vision]. So we moved some of these players 40 feet away from the eye chart and they were still reading the low lines. I was shocked."
The baseball players themselves reported being able to see the ball much better and other eyesight improvements. The researchers also believe that the improved vision of the players contributed to their 22 victories in the 2013 Big West Baseball season.
"Trained players showed improved vision after training, had decreased strike-outs, and created more runs; and even accounting for maturational gains, these additional runs may have led to an additional four to five team wins," the researchers wrote. "These results demonstrate real world transferable benefits of a vision-training program based on perceptual learning principles."
