A Jolt To The Brain May Sharpen The Vision, Study Claims

A new study has found a way to improve vision. Scientists have discovered that stimulating a region of the brain for 20 minutes with mild electrical current will help improve vision for about two hours, but the best result may be seen in those who have worse eyesight.

According to ndtv.com, Geoff Woodman, associate professor at the Vanderilt University in the United States said that this kind of stimulation can improve cognitive processing in other parts of the brain. So they also want to know if the same result can be achieved if the process was to be done in the visual system.

"Could we make someone's vision better - not at the level of the eye, like Lasik or glasses, but directly at the level of the brain?" said Woodman.

The Deccan Chronicles reported that the study was composed of 20 young and healthy volunteers with normal or near-normal vision. They were asked to study the position of two identical vertical lines and were told to say if the lines were perfectly aligned or not. The test was considered to be more sensitive than a normal eye chart, and the researchers gave a very specific measurement of each subjects' visual acuity.

After the initial test, Woodman and his team passed a very mild electric current through the visual cortex- the area at the back of the brain responsible for processing visual information. Twenty minutes later, they took the visual test again. The researchers found that 75 percent of the participants showed a significant improvement after undergoing transcranial stimulation.

The researchers decided to repeat the experiment but decided to place the electrodes in other parts of the brain. As a result, the researchers did not see any improvement in the participants' eyesight, Science Alert reported.

Lead author Robert Reinhart, from the Boston University who conducted this research as a PhD student at Vanderbilt, said this finding had interesting implications for future basic science.

To test how much improvement the current stimulation would have in people in the real world, the researchers made the participants read a standard eye chart before and after applying current to their visual cortex. The result revealed an improvement on the subjects' vision by at least one to two letters, although there was a significant difference between subjects.

"We saw that those who came in with poorer vision, who might be on their way to needing glasses, had these big leaps, while others who came in with excellent vision showed no change," Reinhart said.