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This App Trains You to See Farther
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/med-tech/this-app-trains-you-to-see-farther-16506910
This App Trains You to See Farther
Twenty-twenty vision? Big deal. UltimEyes could train your brain to see in 20/7.5.
By William Herkewitz
February 18, 2014 2:00 PM
When a major league baseball pitcher throws a 95-mph fastball, only about 400 milliseconds—the duration of a blink—pass before the ball rockets over the plate. And a batter gets less than half that time to decide whether to swing, and where. Baseball players, then, could reap huge benefits from being able to probe a baseball farther from their eyes. And that inspired Aaron Seitz, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Riverside, who has created a new, publicly available app that conditions users to see farther on or off the baseball diamond.
In a study published this week in the journal Current Biology, Seitz worked with 19 players on the University of California, Riverside, baseball team, and showed that his app UltimEyes lengthened the distance at which the players could see clearly by an average of 31 percent. After using the app for 30 25-minute intervals, players saw an improvement that pushed many of them beyond normal 20/20 vision, including seven who attained freakishly good 20/7.5 vision—meaning that at a distance of 20 feet, they were clearly seeing what someone with normal vision could see at no farther than 7.5 feet away.
<snip>
Although Seitz's app seems quite implausible, its effects are indeed real, says Peggy Series, a neuroscientist at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study or the development of UltimEyes. "These results are, in fact, very similar to what's already been proven in the lab," Series says. "It's very exciting. The fact that the app is improving the players' visual acuity is not as surprising to me as that the improvement might actually help in playing baseball."
The Brain—Not the Eyes
Despite its name, UltimEyes has little to do with improving the physical eye or eye muscles. Rather, the app works by exploiting recent insights into when and how the adult brain can be fundamentally rewired—a concept known as neuroplasticity.
<snip>
UltimEyes exercises the visual cortex, the part of our brain that controls vision. Brain researchers have discovered that the visual cortex breaks down the incoming information from our eyes into fuzzy patterns called Gabor stimuli. The theory behind UltimEyes is that by directly confronting the eyes with Gabor stimuli, you can train your brain to process them more efficiently—which, over time, improves your brain's ability to create clear vision at farther distances.
<snip>
This App Trains You to See Farther
Twenty-twenty vision? Big deal. UltimEyes could train your brain to see in 20/7.5.
By William Herkewitz
February 18, 2014 2:00 PM
When a major league baseball pitcher throws a 95-mph fastball, only about 400 milliseconds—the duration of a blink—pass before the ball rockets over the plate. And a batter gets less than half that time to decide whether to swing, and where. Baseball players, then, could reap huge benefits from being able to probe a baseball farther from their eyes. And that inspired Aaron Seitz, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Riverside, who has created a new, publicly available app that conditions users to see farther on or off the baseball diamond.
In a study published this week in the journal Current Biology, Seitz worked with 19 players on the University of California, Riverside, baseball team, and showed that his app UltimEyes lengthened the distance at which the players could see clearly by an average of 31 percent. After using the app for 30 25-minute intervals, players saw an improvement that pushed many of them beyond normal 20/20 vision, including seven who attained freakishly good 20/7.5 vision—meaning that at a distance of 20 feet, they were clearly seeing what someone with normal vision could see at no farther than 7.5 feet away.
<snip>
Although Seitz's app seems quite implausible, its effects are indeed real, says Peggy Series, a neuroscientist at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in the study or the development of UltimEyes. "These results are, in fact, very similar to what's already been proven in the lab," Series says. "It's very exciting. The fact that the app is improving the players' visual acuity is not as surprising to me as that the improvement might actually help in playing baseball."
The Brain—Not the Eyes
Despite its name, UltimEyes has little to do with improving the physical eye or eye muscles. Rather, the app works by exploiting recent insights into when and how the adult brain can be fundamentally rewired—a concept known as neuroplasticity.
<snip>
UltimEyes exercises the visual cortex, the part of our brain that controls vision. Brain researchers have discovered that the visual cortex breaks down the incoming information from our eyes into fuzzy patterns called Gabor stimuli. The theory behind UltimEyes is that by directly confronting the eyes with Gabor stimuli, you can train your brain to process them more efficiently—which, over time, improves your brain's ability to create clear vision at farther distances.
<snip>
The study is free at http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2814%2900005-0
The app is $5.99 for a limited time at http://ultimeyesvision.com/
Don't know if insurance covers it.
7 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks for sharing this 
have been lifting bar bells. 
Thank you.