Usually amblyopia, more commonly known as a lazy eye, is treated by something like “patching”–where doctors put a patch over the stronger, dominant eye and the weaker, wandering eye has to adjust on its own. …

Instead of separating the work of the two eyes, the team devised a way of forcing them to work together. The researchers had people with amblyopia play Tetris with head-mounted goggles on. The goggles separated what the two eyes saw, so one saw only the falling blocks and the other only the blocks on the ground. After testing 18 adults over two weeks–nine with the two-eye goggle system and nine with patching–the group with the goggle system improved their weaker eyes considerably compared to the patched group, and even improved their depth perception.