"By middle age the lenses in your eyes harden becoming less flexible. Your eye muscles increasingly struggle to bend them httparchopht.jamanetwork.comarticle.aspxarticleid to focus on this print. But a new form of training  brain retraining really  may delay the inevitable agerelated loss of closerange visual focus so that you wont need reading glasses. Various studies say it works though no treatment of any kind works for everybody. The increasing difficulty of reading small print that begins in middle age is called presbyopia http from the Greek words for old man http and eye http Its exceedingly common and despite the Greek etymology women experience it too. Every five years the average adult over  loses the ability to see another line http on the eye reading charts used in eye doctors offices httpsen.wikipedia.orgwikiLogMAR_chart. By  presbyopia affects an estimated  percent httparchopht.jamanetwork.comarticle.aspxarticleid of adults in North America. Over age  its nearly universal http Its why my middleaged friends are getting fitted for bifocals or graduated lenses. There are holdouts of course who view their cellphones and newspapers at arms length to make out the words. The decline in vision is inconvenient but its also dangerous causing falls http and auto accidents http Bifocals or graduated lenses can help those with presbyopia read but they also contribute http to falls and accidents because they can impair contrast sensitivity the ability to distinguish between shades of gray and depth perception httppss.sagepub.comcontentearly. Im . I dont need to correct my vision for presbyopia yet but I can tell its coming. I can still read the The New York Times print edition with ease but to read text in somewhat smaller fonts I have to strain. Any year now I figured my eye doctor would tell me it was time to talk about bifocals. Or so I thought. Then I undertook a monthslong strenuous regimen designed to train my brain to correct for what my eye muscles no longer can manage. The approach has been reported http in the news media http and perhaps youve heard of it. Its based on perceptual learning the improvement of visual performance as a result of demanding training on specific images. Some experts have expressed skepticism http that it can work but a number of studies provide evidence http that it can improve visual acuity contrast sensitivity and reading speed. The training involves looking at images called Gabor patches httpneuroanatody.comwhatsinagaborpatch in various conditions. Gabor patches optimally stimulate the part of the brain responsible for vision http A great deal of the training involves trying to see Gabor patches placed between closely spaced distracting flankers. In training the flanker spacing is varied the target contrast is turned way down and the images are flashed on a screen for fractions of a second  to the point that one can barely see the target. A screenshot of a Gabor patch from the GlassesOff app tutorial.CreditGlassesOff Do this and similar exercises hundreds of times over multiple sessions weekly continue for months and gradually presbyopia lessens a number http of studies show http One study also http examined functions of the eye itself and found none of these improvements were because of changes in the eye. Theyre all in the brain. Various smartphone apps say they offer this kind of visionimproving training I used one called GlassesOff http the only one I found that was backed by scientific studies. Perceptual learning can improve the vision of people who already see quite well and those with other conditions. For example a study http tested the approach in  young adults around age . Compared with a control group of  young adults the treatment group increased letter recognition speed. Similar training is an effective component http in treating amblyopia httpsweb.archive.orgwebhttpoptometry.berkeley.edupdfsberkoptmagazine_sml.pdf also called lazy eye httpsnei.nih.govhealthamblyopiaamblyopia_guide which is the most frequent cause of vision loss in infants and children affecting  percent of the population httpsweb.archive.orgwebhttpoptometry.berkeley.edupdfsberkoptmagazine_sml.pdf. It may also improve vision in those with mild myopia http nearsightedness. It should be acknowledged that some researchers involved in many of these studies have financial ties to GlassesOff. However other studies with no commercial links http obtained similar results and several scientists I spoke to including those without ties to GlassesOff thought the science behind the app was credible. One study published in Psychological Science httppss.sagepub.comcontentearly trained  collegeaged adults and  older adults around age  with Gabor patch exercises for . hours per day for seven days. After training the older adults ability to see lowcontrast images improved to the level that the collegeage ones had before training. Scientists dont know exactly how perceptual learning relieves presbyopia but they have some clues based on how our brain processes visual information. After first taking in raw data of an image through the eye different sets of neurons in the brain process it as separate features http like edges and colors. Then the brain must coordinate activity across sets of neurons to assemble these features into recognizable objects like chairs faces letters or words. Reading at our normal pace the brain has only about  milliseconds http to do this work until the eyes automatically move onto the next letter or word. Once they do so were taking in more information from whatever the eyes focus on next. If we havent yet processed the prior set of information we cant understand it. Visual processing time is challenged and slowed by noisy images low contrast or closely spaced information like small fonts. There is a bottleneck in the brain http as it attempts to build and then comprehend the image. Therefore enhancing and speeding up the ability to process image components  through perceptual learning  improves a wide range of vision functions. Whats surprising is that this is possible in adult brains. Neuroplasticity  the ability of the brains processing functions to change to acquire new skills  is most strongly associated with childhood. Its still more pronounced in children than adults but for some skills including vision httpsbooks.google.combooksidpuYSsGsClpgPPdqFahleCM.CPoggioCT..PerceptuallearningpgPR the brain is more malleable than once thought. The training with GlassesOff is long and challenging. I found it fun initially perhaps because it was new. But weeks into it I began to dread the monotonous labor. Yet after a couple of months the app reports I can read fonts nearly one third the size I could when I started and much more rapidly. According to feedback from GlassesOff my vision after training is equivalent to a man about  years younger than my age. If I reach   the age at which almost everyone needs corrective lenses http to read  and still dont need reading glasses I may conclude that the training has paid off. As apps go GlassesOff is not cheap. I paid . for three months of use  long enough to get me through the initial program. Upon completion I was invited to pay another . per year for maintenance training. Its a nice option but the hard work and price probably mean that the bifocals market will remain strong."