In the future you can expect to see armies of mechwarriors being piloted by mice. Princeton University neuroscientist, David Tank is training mice to navigate a rudimentary maze using Quake 2’s game engine for the purpose of studying individual neurons as they travel in the brain.

The real question is, when can I expect these little guys to appear in multiplayer?

Full write-up of the research off Wired.

[Wired via Offworld/BoingBoing]

Competition exists in many forms. Whether it be in the workplace, on the field, or online; being competitive forces one to strategize. At its core a strategy focuses on one thing: outsmarting your opponent. Even with a game’s AI on “expert” most computer controlled opponents behave in predictable manners. However, play a human online and the dynamic radically changes. New tactics, new weapon combinations and the inevitable humble pie giveaway.

Humans behave differently and in strategizing we try to calculate our opponent’s next step, placing ourselves in our opponents shoes. It turns out this action of empathizing with our competition causes far greater brain activity than playing with a static/computer controlled opponent.
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It is no big surprise that things begin to retard as we age; motor skills, physical capabilities, other various bodily functions, etc. However, promising research suggests that videogames help the mind and body stay sharp. With the Nintendo Wii and DS flooding retirement communities and high school level physical education programs, along with a bevy of brain training games that allow greater access to gaming, the videogame industry as a whole has undoubtedly gone mainstream. The stereotype that videogames are immature and a waste of time has now been discarded and replaced with the thought that they can now benefit the user in more ways than just providing an  entertaining and stimulating expierence.

A limited study was conducted between adults in their 60s and 70s in relation to cognitive functions. The test group was taught to play the real time strategy game “Rise of Nations” and after only a one month period, improved original test scores in memory, reasoning and multitasking.

While more research is to be planned, senior researcher Dr. Arthur F. Kramer, a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign states stated, “This is the first published study to suggest as much, so it’s important not to overstate the findings.”

For future studies more types of strategic games have been mapped out.

We want to hear what you think. Do you think that videogames have increased your cognative thinking process and improved your hand-eye coordination, or are they just a leisurely pastime?

[Reuters]

Over in Ventura County down here in California, Professor Douglas Gentile has done us gamers a favor: proving that gamers can be surgeons, too. Well, not really. Still, check out this excerpt:

Gentile looked at 33 laparoscopic surgeons, who perform minimally invasive procedures by inserting a camera and instruments into a patient through small incisions while looking at a television monitor.

“We gave them a survey that asked them about their current and previous video game playing,” Gentile said. “And then we had them play three video games and scored them.”

The games were “Star Wars Racer,” “Silent Scope” and, of course, “Super Monkey Ball.”

“Each of these three games had elements we thought would be relevant in a surgical arena: precision targeting, two-handed choreography, non-dominant-hand dexterity, tracking, and using three-dimensional information off a two-dimensional screen,” he said.

Then, each surgeon was scored in a surgical simulation.

Guess what Gentile and his team found?

“The two biggest predictors of advanced surgical skill were how much surgeons had played video games in the past and how good they were playing video games currently,” he said.

Video game talent was a better predictor of surgical success than how many years of training each surgeon had or how many surgeries they had actually performed, he said.

In fact, the study found that surgeons who had played video games for three or more hours a week in the past were 27 percent faster and made 37 percent fewer errors than those who did not.

Still, Gentile warned that “this is not to say that video gamers are better surgeons. There’s a lot of things that go into being a good surgeon, like bedside manner and decision-making. This is not how good they are as an overall surgeon. This is about their precision techniques.”

However, video games may, and probably should, be used to train surgeons, Gentile said.

Well, I guess this gives you aspiring surgeons a reason to play your games. And a good reason to ask your parents to buy you games for you teens. Just don’t let video games be the reason why you got kicked out of medical school.

[Ventura County Star]