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Harnessing the Health Powers of Gaming
conq writes "BusinessWeek.com has a piece on how some new videogames are being designed with health-related applications in mind. From the article: 'A stopwatch and a tub of frigid ice water are the standard tools medical researchers use to test pain tolerance. How long can a person keep his arm submerged? In an unusual project, last year researchers at the University of Maryland's medical center used the arm-in-ice water test to evaluate a new video game called Free Dive. The researchers found that their subjects — 60 children, ranging in age from 5 to 12 — were able to keep an arm submerged for about 19 seconds on average. If, however, they simultaneously played Free Dive on a PC with their dry hand, the kids could tolerate an average of 86 seconds in the icy liquid — an increase of more than 400%.'" Juan Rey also writes to mention a report from financial news group Bloomberg, saying that Nintendo expects that their upcoming diet-related software for the Wii will succeed the way 'Brain Training' has done with DS.
I recall hearing on a science podcast a while ago that a similar technique is being tested in dentistry. It was reported that patients who wore glasses that showed them a movie were able to withstand significantly more invasive and painful procedures for longer periods of time before anesthesia was required. Since pain is created in the brain, it makes good sense that "distracting" the brain would make it significantly easier to withstand greater amounts of pain. The many anecdotes of soldiers sustaining horrendous injuries but fighting on without knowing would seem to corroborate this.
I wonder if it would be possible to train someone to consciously ignore the pain centre of the brain in this manner?
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.