Scientists at the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health have found that clinically depressed people's performance in a 3-D video game suggests spatial memory, which tells the brain where objects are located and their orientation, does not function correctly. When investigating the link between depression and the hippocampus (the centre of memory), U.S. researchers found clinically depressed individuals asked to navigate a video game's 3-D virtual reality environment did poorly when compared to mentally healthy individuals.
The study, led by NIMH researcher Neda Gould and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, looked at 30 depressed patients and 19 people without a mood disorder. The scientists had previously given the same people a two-dimensional memory test but the two-dimensional test couldn't show the differences in spatial memory that were captured by the 3-D video game. The game they used was developed by scientists at the University College of London in England. The results suggest the game is a superior tool to provide "a consistent, sensitive measure of cognitive deficits in patients with affective disorders," Gould wrote in the study.
News source: CBC News
The study, led by NIMH researcher Neda Gould and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, looked at 30 depressed patients and 19 people without a mood disorder. The scientists had previously given the same people a two-dimensional memory test but the two-dimensional test couldn't show the differences in spatial memory that were captured by the 3-D video game. The game they used was developed by scientists at the University College of London in England. The results suggest the game is a superior tool to provide "a consistent, sensitive measure of cognitive deficits in patients with affective disorders," Gould wrote in the study.
News source: CBC News
3D-games are retardeds thing.
Just kidding.
But they should really increase the number of people studied before getting real conclusions.
that's exactly the first thing that came to me too...
personally i dont think its sceintific. And statistics are what people use in order to sway things their way. Statistics are not factual, they are estimates/guesstimates at the best.
If i picked 2 people at random from the street and one has lung cancer can i therefore determine on the basis of my facts that 1 in 2 people have lung cancer?
I was thinking the same exact thing when I read this article. I have a family history of depression, mom is chronic depression, her sister is bipolar, myself as acute and seasonal depression symptoms. Im usually kicking ass and taking names in cs:source... no suckage here. Only thing I could reason if this study was legit is that I have in some way compensated for it by gaming more than the average person because I do not feel like going out and turn to gaming if I am feeling a bit down.
I’m sure I’ll be asked to elaborate on this… and I will do so if questioned. The one thing that gets me most about this… is the fact they insinuate that my problem cause’s more difficulties then I already face
sorry for the wall of text
As for the study, they're testing people who are (supposedly) clinically depressed at the time of testing. They're attempting to correlate a depressed brain and that brains cognitive abilities vis-a-vis spatial reasoning. The problem with that is: How do they determine who's depressed and who's not? Did they MRI and CT scan everyone to study the blood flow in the subjects' brains, or did they rely only on psychiatric assessments? I'd really like to see the methodology used in this study.
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