The Lazy Eye

Do you know someone with the lazy eye? If you did not know, lazy eye is defined to be visual disorder where the brain ignores one of the “lazy eye’s” inputs.

People with “lazy eye” cannot see in 3D and they cannot judge distance very well compared to others because they need to use both eyes in order gauge the distance.  Prior to a Canadian-led study, the only treatment available was covering the stronger eye with an eye patch in order to force the brain to use the weaker eye and fix itself. The only problem with this was that it could have only been done with in children. As adults, it is believed to be an untreatable disorder because adult brains are too settled in and cannot learn to effectively use the lazy eye.

However, in this new treatment developed at McGill University in Montreal, they found that playing video games with both eyes (using specialized goggles) can dramatically improve vision in adults with lazy eye. 

Image courtesy of Pierre Dubois/McGill University Health Centre

 

How did the treatment work? Participants play the video game Tetris using a pair of head-mounted video goggles.  One side of the goggles sees the falling pieces of the game, while the other side sees the pieces sitting at the bottom of the screen. The participants play this game while using both eyes simultaneously. They repeat this process for an hour a day for two weeks. In that time span, nine adults with lazy eye showed dramatic improvements in the vision of the weaker eye and in their 3D perception as well.

By having both eyes work together, they can get the brain to efficiently correct itself and use both of the eyes’ inputs. Tetris is not the only game that can be used to effectively fix the lazy eye disorder. Any interactive, visually intensive game that forces both eyes to be used will ultimately be the solution to the lazy eye disorders. The researchers of this study hope to use this study to perfect a treatment for lay eye disorder and replace patching in children with something more fun and enjoyable.

Nothing better than a 3-D brain!

The 3D Brain in action. Image courtesy of University of Michigan.

3D brains? What? A game? That sounds insane.

When would we ever need the three dimensional imaging of a brain anywhere other than a lecture hall? This week, I have decided on venturing into something a little less typical than video games. I decided to give you guys a look into how a hologram-like brain has helped researchers decode what occurs during migraines and how they can generally treat migraines.

A professor from the University of Michigan, who specializes in dentistry, created a holographic 3D Brain and is hoping to actually understand what occurs in our brain during a migraine attack. The device he made to visualize the 3D brain involved interaction with a joystick and wearing a special pair of glasses.

You may be wondering why the sudden change? This week’s blog focuses more on this scientific breakthrough and provides some really interesting information as to what is happening in today’s society. It may not include any benefits of video games or any key facts about video games, but it does display that video game hardware such as a joystick can be a great tool to use in other fields as well. That is one minor point I came to realize when delving into this topic.

In the simulation, using the equipment, the user can navigate through what appears as a brain in front of their very eyes when indeed it is nothing more but a virtual image. We learned in class that the endorsing the brain in product improves credibility and makes the source supposedly stronger, and when I discovered news about this subject, it made it curious about what else the brain is capable of. By looking at how we can stop migraines, we can help improve the lives of indiduvals who suffer from them. If this all works out, this technology can be used in order to look for ways to treat other diseases and pain in the near future.

This article provided information that I had no idea of prior to, and becoming educated about it ignited my curiosity and made me just want to share it with you guys.

Video games and creativity.

Figure 1. A family playing together. Image courtesy of sheknows.com.

 

What may appear as simply a family get together can hold loads of wonderful information. 

In a research study done at Michigan State University in 2011, they found a correlation between video game playing and heighten level of creativity. In the study conducted on five hundred 12 year old students, they found that kids who have had exposure to video games had scored higher on creative tests that included drawing pictures and writing stories relating to that picture.

Figure 2. Torrance test example. Image courtesy of dangerousminds.net.

This specific test on gauging one’s creativity is also known as the Torrance test. Using a curved shape, the participants had to construct an “interesting and exciting” image using that shape, and then give that picture a title and story to it. These tests were then given to judges in whom they rated the images on a scale of fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration. An example of a Torrance test can be seen in figure 2. 

What I find truly astonishing from this study is the fact that you could even gauge creativity. How could you measure creativity? Apparently, the Torrance Test is one of the ways to do so. Now, when you realize you could measure creativity, what can you do with that? You can determine what factors can increase creativity, and video gaming is one of the many ways to do so.

This study showed that students who played video games compared to those who hadn’t prior to the test were able to thinking outside the usual, and create images and stories that were far more different and creative. The games that both girls and guys play don’t have to be nonviolent because the research also showed that violence had no impact on creativity.

With this new found discovery, we can use this knowledge to develop video games that will optimize the level of creativity in children. We can prepare our future generations to become better abstract thinkers and develop solutions that only our wildest minds could imagine. 

Age and gender can’t stop us from gaming.

Source: Author

Many of us have encountered the saying that “we are too old for gaming”. That is untrue. We are not. Video games are not just a representation of our inner childhood, it could very much reflect who we are.

Today, I would like to bring to attention the many varying ages that people play video games. According to a study done by Entertainment Software Association, they found that 32% who play video games are of age 18 or less, 37% are between 18 to 35, and people above the age of 35 make up 31% of the gaming population. This was surprising in that I expected the younger pool to be much larger. Many would assume that in today’s society and culture, we would find that as age increase, video gaming would decrease, but this research proved otherwise.

The Entertainment Software Association also recorded that the average age of people who play video games is 30 during the time of research.

Their is no solid linkage between age and and video gaming, and that could provide a strong argument for critics who believe otherwise. To understand the benefits of video gaming, it would be best to know more about the audience, and who they generally are.

As for gender, something very surprising I discovered revolved around the idea of male dominance. I expected males to represent a large majority of the gaming demographic, but they only made up 53% of the gaming demographic. Women on the other hand made up 47%. This was a huge shocker when I came upon this information. What is even more astonishing was women around the age of 30 made up more than boys below the age of 18. In today’s society, I assumed boys below the age of 18 to make up a large chunk of the demographic but the statistics prove otherwise. These statistics came from the Entertainment Software Association as well.

It is a lot of numerical data to pull in, but once you gather yourself, you will see that age and gender have certain traits that can be identify, but association does not lead to causation. Age and gender does not stop us from playing video games and I believe it won’t even in the near future.

For more information, visit the following site:

http://www.theesa.com/

A game to learn programming?

Utterly absurd; You think a programming game like that would even attract kids? Well it does, and its name is CodeSpells.

The world of CodeSpells; one of the characters in the gaming envrioment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TslR9CG6yKI

Computer scientists at University of California San Diego have come up with an immersible first person role-playing game in which they play a wizard in a world of gnomes. CodeSpells is the only game of its kind, in which it incorporates actual programming into a highly interactive game. Players have to write spells in Java, one of the most fundamental programming languages as of today. What is a better way to teach kids how to program, than to make it a video game.

Video games are by far one of the most interactive ways to teach a person to do certain tasks, to learn a new concept. To teach kids underneath the college level, it becomes a lot tougher, because of lack of qualified teachers to teach programming at the lower levels. CodeSpells is one solution to that problem, exposing young students to the world of programming. By accessing CodeSpells, we are providing young children with the stepping stone to start programming at a younger age and help them build upon it.

In testing the game on a group of 40 girls, all between the ages of 10 to 12, they found that the girls got the major components of the Java language down within an hour. These girls had no programming experience prior. They just played the game and learned from it. This opens many doors to others as it shows how deep of an impact video games can have from a learning perspective.   

A major problem in programming is the linkage between programming and failure. When a new beginner of programming encounters a failure, they often give up. Here is where the video game aspect comes into effect. When an individual encounters a problem in a video game, they often keep trying to play and work around it if the game is addicting. This was exactly the case in the testing of the CodeSpells. They found that the students were disappointed when they were told to stop the game. Their interest in the game did not affect their mentality of failing. They worked around their issues and worked to solve the problem, a critical skill highly desired for in today’s company.

In the end, CodeSpells have and will open many doors for programming. It’s not just a video game, its more than that, it’s the future.

(the UC scientists plan on releasing the game for free in the future once its refine, so look out for it!)

For related articles:

https://sites.google.com/a/eng.ucsd.edu/codespells/ (Plenty of information on the game)

http://codespells.blogspot.com/ (More information on the game)

 

Can you see it?

Are you one of the kids who were jealous of the individuals who have great eyesight? The ones who often play video games? Even if you’re not jealous, you have to be somewhat curious as to why such strange occurrences occur. Most people link good eyesight to eating carrots, but that is not always the case. Well, from those specific experiences, more than likely, someone would say they have or had play video game. I would have to say there is a correlation between playing video games and improved eyesight.

In a research done at University of Toronto, they found that subjects who had played shooting or driving video games displayed an improved ability in searching for a specific target in complex backgrounds. The experiment they compose compared action video game players to players who had no experience. These players were ordered to do three visual searching tasks. In simpler words, they had to find “the needle in a haystack”. Guess what? They found that the players who played video games perform better on all three tasks.

This improvement of the  searching skill could not have been concluded based one experiment and so they decided to do another study. In that experiment they took 60 participants, all of who never participated in any video games, and had them play a total of ten hours in an hour or two hour interval. The 60 participants were divided into groups of 3, 20 played a first person shooter, 20 played a driving game, and the last 20 played a puzzle game.  The end result showed that the participants who played either first person shooter or driving game were much faster and more accurate on all three visual search tasks. The puzzle game players did not improve, which hints that more intense the video games are, the more they helps our eyes grow accustom to the fast pace action.

First person shooters such as Medal of Honor help improved the searching capabilities of participants in the experiment.

With another experiment that resulted in favor of the video games, we can see some correlation between racing/first person shooting video games and better spatial recognition.  If you ever feel the need to see things in a crowd better, skip the carrots, pick up a controller, and play some Call of Duty.

If you would want more information about this study, click the following link:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130314141337.htm

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uot-pav031413.php

The road to a cure for mental and health defects.

As far fetch as it sounds, video games have shown throughout the recent years to have positive therapeutic success and have begun to show health-related benefits.

In a study done at the University of Utah led by Professor Carol Bruggers of University of Utah’s Department of Pediatrics, results showed that patients who played certain interactive games, including Patient Empowerment Exercise Video Game (a game made specifically for this study), experienced empowerment and a stronger “fighting mentality”. In other simpler words, they found the patients to be better off, mentally and physically. In the other other interactive games, they found the same effect in patients with several chronic illnesses. Many of you may be wondering how it does so. Games enhances the patient’s mind-being through how the brain reacts from playing video games. More specifically, through positive emotions and the rewards system, we see that players benefit extremely well from it.

Robert Kessler, director of the Entertainment Arts and Engineering Master’s program involved in the study, declared that the Patient Empowerment Exercise Video Game is “clearly the first of a whole line of research into therapeutic video games”. With this one success, many more will come if they choose to pursue this idea. Not only will we see benefits for patients, bit benefits to health care providers will surface as well. How? Therapeutic games provide many opportunities to to treat metabolic diseases, mental health disorders, cancer, and strokes.

Now, how would these games be relatable to us? Everyone has had access to video games. We play them, we see them played, some even go as far as role-playing. The researchers involved in this study pushed and looked further into available clinical data on health related video games found on modern platforms such as the Wii, the XBOX, and the PlayStation, and surely enough, they found that similar effects were resulted in these games. Even if you do not suffer from any health defects, video games have shown we can fight any mental disorders. We can lessen the pain of any individual suffering. All it takes is a little gaming.