Can UltimEyes app train your brain to give you superhuman vision?

WANT to unlock your potential and train your brain to give you superhuman vision? Take a look at this app to see if it’s really possible.

Can an app improve your vision? UltimEyes looks at unlocking your superhuman sight.

WANT to upgrade your vision? There’s an app that gives your eyes a workout and retrains your brain to unlock superhuman abilities.

In an article by Popular Mechanics it looks at UltimEyes, an interactive game created by neuroscientist Aaron Seltz, which is intended to improve vision through 25-minute visual “workouts” such as following dots and clicking on blobby targets as quick as you can when they appear.

Interestingly, UltimEyes has nothing to do with improving the eye muscles themselves. The program is actually focusing on rewiring your brain in a concept known as neuroplasticity.

“Within the last decade or so we’ve started to learn that brain fitness is a bit akin to physical fitness,” Seitz says. “If we exercise our brain in the proper ways, pretty much everything that the brain does should be able to be improved.”

The app trains the visual cortex, the part of the brain that controls vision and improving the process where images are broken down into patterns known as Gabor stimuli. The idea of the app is to directly confront eyes with these Gabor stimuli, which lets your eyes process them more efficiently.

A screenshot of UltimEyes in action. That blobby bit is Gabor stimuli.

The course lasts for eight weeks but it is claimed users have seen vast improvements in clarity when reading and in dim light after just three.

Seitz tested the app on a team of baseball players (a sport where speed of vision is key) and it is claimed players saw an improvement from their 20/20 vision to superhuman 20/7.5 vision. This means they could clearly see a target at 20 feet what someone at 7.5 feet away would see. Their eyesight had more definition, were able to distinguish lower contrast objects and their eyes didn’t get tired as much.

Despite the positive results there still remain many questions surrounding neuroplasticity such as why it works, why it’s more effective in certain individuals and how long the effects last for.

Seitz stresses UltimEyes is not intended for curing visual impairments, simply to boost those already with good eyesight. He thinks neuroplasticity can unlock physical potential and aims to use it for improving hearing and enhancing memory.