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Using video games to treat attention deficit disorder |
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56 votes,
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For children who suffer from attention deficit disorder, playing video games might help treatment of the disorder and improve attention spans. In a recent study, researchers used specially adapted Sony Playstations to help train the children to modify their brain waves. Research has shown that by learning to increase waves to about 12 Hz, patients are much more able to relax and concentrate on the matter in hand; this is normally done by showing brain wave data on a computer screen.
'As the child's brain waves approached an "optimal pattern", the controller would become more responsive, thus encouraging the child to produce those brainwave patterns to succeed at the game'
Rather than trying to get hyperactive children to sit and observe their fluctuating brain waves on a computer, though, the researchers decided to use Playstations. Sensors attached to each child's scalp measured his or her brain waves, and these signals were then transmitted through a processing unit to the Playstation controllers. As the child's brain waves approached an 'optimal pattern', the controller would become more responsive, thus encouraging the child to produce those brainwave patterns to succeed at the game.
The researchers who conducted the study worked in tandem with NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia who had patented similar technology to measure pilot's responses in flight simulators. With NASA's help, the special game-playing consoles helped the children with ADD who were tested achieve improvements in half the normal time. As the lead researcher Olafur Palsson says, "Their brains were lured into changing their behaviour in a healthy way."
NASA are now looking into producing a consumer version of the machine, but one company, East3, are already releasing a video game-based attention trainer in 2001. Their attention trainer will reveal brain wave activity to the player in real time, and thus teach the person over time to control their brain waves. Their website describes such attention training as "a painless and noninvasive technique best described as a learning exercise that trains people to control their attention." One imagines that the kids involved won't care what it is called, as long as they get to play the games.
Further information on the East 3 trainer can be found at www.east3.com/attention_faq.html and at www.attention.com.
Summarised from an article by Michael Menduno, entitled 'Adventures in Mind Control', in Wired magazine (January 2001 issue) monitored for the Institute by Roger Knights. Additional information from the East3 website (www.east3.com) .
Recent updates on biofeedback treatment for ADD
Summarised from an article by Karen Wright, entitled 'Winning Brain Waves', in Discover magazine (March 2001), monitored for the Institute by Roger Knights.
Biofeedback treatment remains on the margin of attention-deficit disorder treatment because of its expense and the length of time it takes. Taking Ritalin, by contrast, takes seconds and is much cheaper; but the new game-playing systems hope to cut costs and provide an easier route to biofeedback treatment. There are some cautionary things that need to be stated, though. Firstly, the portable systems (as proposed by East 3) are not exactly the same as the NASA-related prototype used in the scientific trials. This means that the same results cannot be guaranteed. Olafur Palsson, one of the researchers involved in the original experiments, has recently cautioned that these portable systems should still be used with a doctor's supervision, at least to begin with.
Where such biofeedback treatment might be most effective is when combined with drug and other treatments. The Attention Disorder Deficit Centre in Toronto recommends an approach that focuses on nutrition, sleep patterns, exercise and learning, as well as biofeedback and drug treatments. But it is biofeedback that mosts excites them with its possibilities of providing a long-term, even permanent, solution; as Lyda Thompson, a director of the centre, puts it, "It's so powerful for a child to learn how to self-regulate, to learn what it feels like to concentrate - that's where the real change happens."
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