Eye Exercises to Improve Vision in Older Adults

Over the years it has been the claim of many natural health practitioners that eyesight could be improved through the use of "eye exercises". A recent study by University of California Riverside researchers G. John Andersen, Rui Ni, Jeffrey D. Bower; and Boston University professor Takeo Watanabe have proven that they just might be on to something.

In a study funded by a $3.5 million grant from the National Institute on Aging the researchers conducted a series of experiments to determine whether repeated performance of certain visual tasks could result in an improvement in the vision of older adults. The subjects, all age 65 and older, were given a series of visual perception tests that were at the limits of what one can see.

The results were somewhat startling.

According to researcher G. John Anderson,"We found that with just two days of training in one-hour sessions with difficult stimuli resulted in older subjects seeing as well as younger college-age subjects."

The improvements were well documented and were found to last for a period of at least three months. The researchers determined that the results show a high degree of brain plasticity among the elderly and suggest that this technique is useful for recovering from declines in vision due to normal aging.

Age related changes in vision such as contrast sensitivity, dark adaptation, visual acuity, spatial vision, orientation, depth perception and motion perception have been well documented in many past studies. This is the first study of its kind to demonstrate that perception training (eye exercises) can in fact be a useful tool for improving vision in the older population. The results offer great potential for millions of seniors with declining eyesight to improve their vision.

The entire study, titled "Perceptual learning, aging, and improved visual performance in early stages of visual processing" was published in the online Journal of Vision.