What is the secret to a great game?

Image Source: Gamfication and Gamevertising

TEDxMaastricht starts today with the theme ‘The Future of Health’ and browsing through this list of abstracts of  health game nominees for the Future of Health award (the winner to be announced today), I was particularly struck by the concept of Daydream by Jan Jonk. 

I am very interested in and have lectured on the gaming brain. The key properties of a successful game are that it must (i) impart independence to the player – allow their own style to shine through, (ii) be interesting and complex and (iii) have a relationship between effort and reward.

Games and brains 

In the game Daydream players with locked-in syndrome or other similar paralysing brain dysfunctions such as stroke, wear a plug-and-play neuroheadset that measures their mental states to alter a rich visual world in which the world’s ecosystem can be influenced by changing the climate through their brainwaves – for instance – by concentrating, relaxing and thinking creatively.

Shining a light in dark corners 

By reaching those brain areas which would be otherwise inaccessible, Daydream has the potential to emotionally empower these patients by drawing them out of their social confinement and giving them a manner of social independency and act as a powerful antidote to depression. In addition, the game may allow doctors, psychologists, family members and pets to enter the patient’s world as avatars – as seen in James Cameron’s movie Avatar – where the wheelchair bound Sully whose avatar becomes a warrior leader in an alternative world.  

All patients are different 

As with inter-individual preferences in the general population the game may need to be tweaked to motivate each patient to engage.  Balancing the world’s ecosystem by influencing the climate may work for some patients while building a motorbike from scratch or designing and maintaining a garden may be of more interest to others.

 Related Post:  

Inside the gaming brain

 

Weekly Neuroscience Update

A new study shows that sleeping after processing new information is most effective. Titled “Memory for Semantically Related and Unrelated Declarative Information: The Benefit of Sleep, the Cost of Wake,” the study was published March 22 in PLOSOne.

Snorting, gasping, or short interruptions in breathing during sleep (sleep apnea) may be linked to depression symptoms, new research shows.

Like the mute button on the TV remote control, our brains filter out unwanted noise so we can focus on what we’re listening to. But when it comes to following our own speech, a new brain study from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that instead of one homogenous mute button, we have a network of volume settings that can selectively silence and amplify the sounds we make and hear.

Just as the familiar sugar in food can be bad for the teeth and waistline, another sugar has been implicated as a health menace and blocking its action may have benefits that include improving long-term memory in older people and treating cancer. Progress toward finding such a blocker for the sugar — with the appropriately malicious-sounding name “oh-glick-nack” — was the topic of a report at the 243rd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.

A hidden and never before recognized layer of information in the genetic code has been uncovered by a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) thanks to a technique developed at UCSF called ribosome profiling, which enables the measurement of gene activity inside living cells — including the speed with which proteins are made.

Limerick Lifelong Learning Festival

I will be giving a free lecture today, Monday 26th March, to mark the start of the Limerick Lifelong Learning Festival.

The title of my talk is “Alzheimer’s Disease – and ways to avoid it”

The talk will take place from 2-4 pm at Limerick’s Downtown Centre.

Check out www.downtowncentre.ie for directions or call Clodagh  061-233701

About Limerick Lifelong Learning Festival

The Limerick Lifelong Learning Festival is a celebration of Lifelong Learning in the region. It aims to promote Limerick as a centre of Lifelong Learning through a wide variety of enjoyable and informative events, taking place throughout the city and county during Festival week.

I am delighted to be a part of the  Limerick Lifelong Learning Festival again this year, following its successful pilot launch last June. The Festival will take place from Monday 26th March to Sunday April 1st. All events are free.

http://www.limerick.ie/lovelearning

Your Weekly Neuroscience Update

 

Laughter with friends releases the brain's "feel-good" chemicals, and helps reduce pain

Laughing with friends releases feel-good brain chemicals, which also relieve pain, new research indicates.

Millions of tinnitus sufferers could get relief thanks to a new treatment which stops the brain creating “phantom” noises by playing matching tones over headphones

Earlier evidence out of UCLA suggested that meditating for years thickens the brain (in a good way) and strengthens the connections between brain cells. Now a further report by UCLA researchers suggests yet another benefit. have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification (“folding” of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster) than people who do not meditate. Further, a direct correlation was found between the amount of gyrification and the number of meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the brain’s neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to environmental changes.

Brain scans of Nasa astronauts who have returned to earth after more than a month in space have revealed potentially serious abnormalities that could jeopardise long-term space missions.

Friends, Foes and Founding a University

Robert Coke, 4th Year GEMS Student Class Rep, Dr Ed Walsh, Founding President of UL, Samer Haj-Bakri, 1st Year GEMS student and Health and Safety Officer, UL Medical Society and Professor Billy O'Connor, Head of Teaching and Research in Physiology, GEMS, UL.

Pictured with Dr. Ed Walsh, Founding President of the University of Limerick, who delivered a public lecture yesterday entitled “Friends, Foes and Founding a University”, based on his memoir “Upstart”, as part of the Graduate Entry Medical School public lecture series.

Celebrating Einstein’s Birthday

Today is Albert Einstein’s birthday.

The famed physicist was born 133 years ago on March 14th 1879.

In honour of the great scientist’s birthday here are three of my favourite Einstein quotes:

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”

Weekly Neuroscience Research Update

Several specific regions of our brains are activated in a two-part process when we are exposed to deceptive advertising, according to new research conducted by a North Carolina State University professor. The work opens the door to further research that could help us understand how brain injury and aging may affect our susceptibility to fraud or misleading marketing.

We make our eye movements earlier or later in order to coordinate with movements of our arms, New York University neuroscientists have found. Their study, which appears in the journal Neuron, points to a mechanism in the brain that allows for this coordination and may have implications for rehabilitation and prosthetics.

The brain has a remarkable ability to learn new cognitive tasks while maintaining previously acquired knowledge about various functions necessary for everyday life. But exactly how new information is incorporated into brain systems that control cognitive functions has remained a mystery. A study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the McGovern Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows how new information is encoded in neurons of the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain involved in planning, decision making, working memory and learning.

A team of academic researchers has identified the intracellular mechanisms regulated by vitamin D3 that may help the body clear the brain of amyloid beta, the main component of plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Opening the door to the development of thought-controlled prosthetic devices to help people with spinal cord injuries, amputations and other impairments, neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Portugal have demonstrated that the brain is more flexible and trainable than previously thought.

Emotion-sensing computer software that models and responds to students’ cognitive and emotional states – including frustration and boredom – has been developed by University of Notre Dame Assistant Professor of Psychology Sidney D’Mello and colleagues from the University of Memphis and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Your Brain On Cannabis: Part Three

Welcome to the final part of this three part series on the effects of cannabis on the brain, and today we look at marijuana as medicine.

There are several well-documented beneficial effects of marijuana including the amelioration of nausea and vomiting, stimulation of hunger in chemotherapy and AIDS patients, lowered intraocular eye pressure (shown to be effective for treating glaucoma), as well as general analgesic effects (pain reliever).

The first treatment to emerge from understanding cannabinoids is the drug rimonabant, recently approved in Europe to treat obesity and related metabolic conditions. The drug works by binding to receptors in the brain and body organs to block cannabinoid action. Studies have shown that an overactivated cannabinoid system in brain areas like the hypothalamus -which is involved in appetite increases food intake and fat accumulation. Rimonabant and similar compounds reduce cannabinoid overstimulation to help normalize appetite, body weight and fat, and also cholesterol levels. Drugs that decrease cannabinoid action also may cause anxiety or depression-side effects scientists are working to combat.

Research is underway to determine if rimonabant also will help smokers and heavy drinkers quit. Scientists believe that rimonabant could work in these conditions by reducing levels of the chemical dopamine in the brain’s motivation centers, which nicotine and other addictive drugs trigger.

In 2011, an oromucosal spray for Multiple Sclerosis patients became licensed for use as a medicine in Canada and parts of Europe, allowing it to be routinely prescribed by doctors. This drug reduces the pain, tremor, and muscle spasms associated with this disease.

Synthesized cannabinoids are also sold as prescription drugs, including Marinol (dronabinol) in the United States and Germany and Cesamet (nabilone) in Canada, Mexico, the United States and the United Kingdom. Canada, Spain, The Netherlands, Austria and fourteen states in the US have legalized some form of cannabis for medicinal use.

I regularly visit schools to explain how addictive drugs including cannabis affect the brain.

Click to arrange a speaking engagement.

For those interested in the topic of marijuana abuse more information can be found at: http://drugabuse.gov/ResearchReports/Marijuana/marijuana3.html