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Video games that contain high levels of action can actually improve your eight sight, a study has revealed.

US researchers found that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved their ability to identify letters presented in a clutter by about 20 per cent.

In essence, playing video games improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart, according to the University of Rochester research team.

Lead researcher Daphne Bavelier said: "Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information.

"After just 30 hours, players showed a substantial increase in the spatial resolution of their vision, meaning they could see figures like those on an eye chart more clearly, even when other symbols crowded in."

Bavelier and graduate student Shawn Green tested university students who had played few, if any, video games in the last year.

Daphne Bavelier, University of Rochester: "When people play action games, they're changing the brain's pathway responsible for visual processing."

At the start of the study, participants were given a crowding test, which measured how well they could discern the orientation of a "T" within a crowd of other distracting symbols.

Students were then divided into two groups.

The experimental group played Unreal Tournament, a first-person shoot-'em-up action game, for roughly an hour a day.

The control group played Tetris, a game equally demanding in terms of motor control, but visually less complex.

After about a month of near-daily gaming, the Tetris players showed no improvement on the test, but the Unreal Tournament players could tell which way the "T" was pointing much more easily than they had just a month earlier.

"When people play action games, they're changing the brain's pathway responsible for visual processing," said Bavelier.

"These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it. That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life."