Effective enhancement of attentional functions in the amblyopic brain

This review endeavored to investigate whether patients who suffer from amblyopia show impairments in attentional functions and whether video games are appropriate to enhance attention. Results of all investigated studies revealed that patients with amblyopia show deficient performance in tasks which measure spatial or temporal attention. Furthermore, numerous studies highlighted that video games foster the enhancement of visual attention in subjects with normal vision. Accordingly, video games appear to be suitable to treat deficits in high-level visual abilities. High-level visual abilities encompass the entire variety of attentional functions. However, there are only a few studies to date which investigated whether video games advance visual attention in patients with amblyopia. Thus, we cannot draw a thorough, evidence-based conclusion but encourage others to conduct studies which examine the latter.