It might look like something out of Blade Runner, but new research from Duke University suggests that athletes who train with strobe-embedded eyewear may see improvements in their visual perception over time.
The team of psychologists, led by Stephen Mitroff, specialize in this kind of research, and they gathered up a hodgepodge of nearly 500 Duke students, everyone from varsity athletes in football, soccer and men’s basketball to Ultimate Frisbee players to regular undergrads. Throughout various activities, subjects wore strobe-enhanced eyewear in which the lens alternates rapidly between clear vision and solid blackness that you can’t see through. Cranked all the way up, the glasses can produce opaque lens for 67 milliseconds at a time for up to six times each second.
This flicker effect would happen at changing frequencies, depending on what researchers were studying. The subjects in the control group (wearing similar goggles that merely have clear lenses) and the strobe-enabled group would be tested for visual sensitivity before and after the tests.
And while the tests didn’t show that the eyewear produced a noticeable uptick in every test, researchers claim the strobe eyewear produced slight improvements in sensitivity to motion and being able to recognize brief visual cues that were only present for 100 milliseconds.
Of course, the huge caveat here is that Nike funded the study and is marketing this technology under their Vapor Strobes eyewear line, which is a component of the SPARQ training regimen. Some outlets claim the eyewear will “dramatically help you increase your reaction time,” though Mitroff is a little more conservative in his assessment.
“Our results varied, but stroboscopic training does seem to enhance vision and attention,” he said. “There are still many open questions. We don’t know how long these effects last. We don’t know much training is needed, and we don’t yet have the whole picture on what is being trained.”
At least they’re just for training and you don’t have to wear them on the field while you’re playing your sport of choice, but at $250 a pop, you still have to think hard about whether the science justifies such an investment.
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