Eyesight is a vital part of sports, from golf to gymnastics. Now, a new study finds that athletes can improve their vision with practice, and that that improvement translates into better performance. “Though we’d been hoping for measurable benefits all along, we were still amazed to see such concrete performance improvements,” says UCR neuroscientist Aaron Seitz, who led the study. “And this demonstrates an important principle: Just as with physical exercise, we can measurably improve our mental fitness with the right training.”
The study was conducted on a group of 19 baseball players at the University of California, Riverside. The athletes’ vision was tested, and then they trained for 25 minutes a day, four days a week, with a specialized piece of software known as ULTIMEYES.
A screenshot from the ULTIMEYES game. Courtesy Aaron Seitz The software’s gameplay is a bit like that of popular iPad “tap” games such as ...
