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Daniel Jacobs also wants to use placebos for good. His new app, which he’s crowd-funding on Indiegogo, is an attempt to take the placebo out of the doctor’s office and into your home. He hopes it will make people feel better, and contribute further to placebo research. You start by setting a goal: say, more joy or love in your life. Then, you choose someone to give you the placebo (maybe a friend or family member), what you want it to be (a pill, say), and where you want to take it (maybe a forest where you go running with a friend). You then "take" the placebo whenever you want to, following a pre-set ritual built into the app. The point is to replicate what’s important about the placebo effect, which isn’t the pill itself, but the experience. "If we think about placebo as a transformational symbol, then people get to choose what placebo they want," says Jacobs. "It can be a pill, magic wand, holy book, communion wafer, or herbs. It just needs to be meaningful for them."
"This is pretty interesting video from Sharad Sharma – a growing network of mostly female creators who are utilising the comics medium and comics workshops to empower women and address social issues pertaining to gender in their part of the world, and also build on those strips to use them for other social commentary and discussion (such as creating comics addressing widespread issues of official corruption)."
Consumers and health experts alike have long tried to make healthy choices seem more palatable by adding a dose of fun. (Think parents sneaking vegetables into their kids’ macaroni and cheese.) Now, companies are getting in on the action, using games to nudge employees in a more healthful direction.
Experts say such game-like health programs can be used to encourage consumers to engage in a wide range of healthy activities—everything from working out to getting flu shots.
Researchers in the Department of Ophthalmology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and Harvard Medical School developed a virtual game to help the blind find their way through new surroundings using computer generated layouts of public buildings. Participants can interact with the virtual environment with a keyboard and rather than relying on visual cues, the game uses auditory cues to help orient the player. According to a new report, the team of researchers are looking to incorporate other interfaces and tools such as a Wii remote or joystick. Dr. Lotfi Merabet, a contributor to the study, says the game metaphor allows for open discoveryand a better understanding of layouts compared to participants simply following directions.
While researching victims of intestinal worms in Tanzania, Canadian infectious disease specialist Isaac Bogoch didn’t always have access to a microscope to search for signs of hookworms and other parasites in stool samples. So, he taped an $8 glass lens over his iPhone’s camera, and suddenly had 50 times the magnifying power.
The resulting microscope (iMicroscope?) was able to detect parasite eggs in stool samples with nearly 70% accuracy (the normal microscope gets it right 87% of the time), and was able to detect some worms with up to 80% accuracy.
Yes, one day games could replace pills. “If anybody needs to be scared of games, it’s definitely the pharmaceutical industry,” said McGonigal, who has done several TED Talks. “People are working on games that work better than morphine for pain relief, games that work better than medicine for depression, games that work better for weight loss than diet pills.
Computer games are increasingly being seen as a way for older people to keep mentally active, as Bryony Mackenzie reports.
"A teenage cancer survivor has started a non-profit organization aiming to help children and teenagers in treatment connect with other patients through video games... Founder Steven Gonzalez was inspired to start the Survivor Games group due his "love for video games" and experience being treated at MD Anderson Children's Cancer Hospital in Texas. Gonzalez was diagnosed with a form of leukemia five years ago with a two percent chance of survival. After undergoing chemotherapy and a double cord blood transplant he had to remain in a sterile environment for 100 days. While isolated, Gonzalez would play video games, and during that time built Play Against Cancer, a video game tailored to cancer patients."
"Playing video games is not just for fun, according to a number of studies of the impact of gaming on adults. In fact, pushing those buttons may be a pathway to physical and emotional health. Here’s what the research shows."
A new game called Auti-Sim simulates childhood experience with autism and aims to raise awareness of the challenges of hypersensitivity disorder.
A new study from the North Carolina State University suggests that elderly people who play video games report a better well-being and emotional functioning.
Study found children did better on reading tests after playing an action game
This is a follow-up article to a previous piece titled "5 Reasons Video Games Are Actuallly Good for You." The topics and research covered in this article are: Kids Who Play Video Games Are More Creative, Girls Who Play Video Games with Dad are Happier, Video Games Are Better Than Watching TV, Video Games Can Help the Elderly Avoid Serious Falls, and Co-op Gamers Are Less Aggressive.
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There has always been at least some sort of disconnect between how things like mobile learning are taught in a classroom and how things work in the 'real world'.
Via John Evans
The Children’s National Medical Center in Washington D.C. opened a new pain care complex this week which was built to introduce video games as a way to help young patients eliminate chronic pain. The games are specially designed and combined with Microsoft’s Kinect to help young patients improve their health without realizing it as games ask them to paint, play and exercise while doctors are on hand to analyze their range of motion.
Video on msnbc.com: The AbleGamers foundation helps educate people on the many benefits gaming has for the disabled.
Playing video games for an hour a day can improve performance on cognitive tasks that use similar mental processes, according to a new study. While previous studies have reported that action games can improve cognitive skills, the researchers say their study is the first to compare several video games and show that different skills can be improved by playing different games. The researchers explain that, much like muscles that can be trained with repetitive actions, repeated use of certain cognitive processes in video games can improve performance on other tasks as well.
Although researchers said that they did find a slight correlation between the two, they also found that other influences like "parenting styles" are more of a cause than regular long periods of screen time. The reason they continue to advise less screen time is because it cuts into other important activities like spending time playing with friends, doing homework, and spending time with parents and siblings.
"We found no effect with screen time for most of the behavioural and social problems that we looked at and only a very small effect indeed for conduct problems, such as fighting or bullying," said lead author Dr. Alison Parkes.
According to the study, conducted online in January, more than half of teens (55 percent) say social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have made them more aware of the needs of others. This is a huge increase from 2011 when 4 in 10 (44 percent) said their use of social media made them more aware. The study also says 2 in 3 teens (68 percent) agree that the benefits of social media outweigh the risks.
Diego Pizzagalli spent a good chunk of 10 years at Harvard doing what most professors at elite institutions do: research. Specifically, research on depression. He's fMRI'd and EEG'd a lot of gray matter, but most of his work got stuck in the lab and never evolved into any real-world application. Then he developed something that was too good to let collect dust in the hallowed halls of academia: software that he says could help treat depression. Now with the help of the Baltimore-based startup incubator Canterbury Road Partners, Pizzagalli is set to turn his lab invention into an app. MoodTune will be a series of simple games that when played regularly, can help treat depression, Pizzagalli and his colleagues say. Turn on the app for 15 minutes a day, play through some games, and maybe it could help. Maybe, they say, in some cases, it'd be all a depressed person would need. Could something that simple actually work? When MoodTune is out, this is how it'll work: You'll open the app and be directed to a simple game (there are "six or seven" games so far Konig says.) The images you see here are from the prototype, but the final version will probably be similar. Here's the example Pizzagalli gave of a game that could be used for a "workout." A face appears onscreen. The user--or patient, depending on your thoughts about the app--looks at the face as words flash above it: "Happy." "Happy." "Sad." "Happy." The user gets slammed with some serious cognitive dissonance as they try to reconcile the faces and words. After the user is done, he gets a review of his score for the game, as well as his overall progress in treatment. An exercise like that can cause certain parts of the brain to work overtime, Pizzagalli says. It's enough, he says, to give certain parts of the brain a "tune-up" and enough, apparently, when done for 15 minutes every day, to counteract some of the symptoms of depression.
"After battling a rare and aggressive form of cancer, Steven is living his life to the fullest. Beating the odds of less than 2% chance for survival, Steven will share how his experience has given him a passion to help kids heal through video games."
"Artist Matteo Farinella and neuroscientist Hana Ros of University College London collaborated to create a graphic novel called Neurocomic about a hapless character who is sucked into a human brain where he encounters bizarre creatures and famous neuroscientists. The objective is to introduce the neurochemical workings of the brain to a wider audience, so entertainment, storytelling and clever metaphors are just as important to the enterprise as the science"
Insurers and healthcare providers recommend some technology for boosting exercise. In the effort to help to promote living healthier lifestyles, health
"I love it when video games can manage to connect at an unexpectedly emotional level, and in Ni No Kuni’s case, I certainly wasn’t expecting it to resonate with me this much prior to starting. Indeed, many reviews hint that it hits all the right emotional high-notes through excellent writing, pacing and character growth, yet it’s the game’s indirect commentary on coping with depression that managed to strike a particular chord. These are just a handful of early examples too; the mending of broken hearts remains a constant theme throughout. At the centre of it all is the bond that I felt with Ollie in particular, a young man that I had initially thought I’d dislike, but instead grew to look up to and admire. We shared something in common, he and I, and although my own depression wasn’t related to a loss, I fully understood him in his strongest and weakest moments. I found common ground in the ways in which we both chose to cope with our own sadness, our acceptance, and our recovery. It hits me now that, despite dealing with the morose subjects of loss and depression, Level 5 and Studio Ghibli have avoided the tired genre tropes of the internally angry, disengaged loner and created a protagonist that deals with his anguish in far more human and relatable ways. Because of this, Ni Ni Kuni might well be one of the most important and relevant JRPGs in more than a decade."
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Placebos para sentirse bien.