Healthy Gaming

Build Your Own Brain Gym: 100 Tools, Exercises, and Games

Chris — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:50:27 PDT

Stay on top of your game mentally and slow the effects of aging on your brain by keeping it in excellent shape. It’s easy to do and costs little to no money with all the resources available on the Internet. The following tools, exercises, and games will stimulate your brain and give it the exercise it needs to stay in top form.

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Online Brain Games

The online games listed here are designed specially for working out your brain.

Strategy Games. These seven games will require you use strategy, which is an excellent way to exercise your brain.

HAPPYneuron. Try the fun games and activities here to build your brain fitness. Join for a fee to have access to fitness programs and personal coaches.

Braingle. Some of the fun brain activities here include brain teasers, riddles, trivia, and brain exercises.

Sharp Brains Brain Teasers and Games. Give these 50 games designed just for exercising your brain a try.

Games for the Brain. Your brain will get a boost with games like Mastermind, chess, and Sudoku here.

BrainCurls. Try your hand at jigsaw puzzles, memory games, and games that sharpen your observation skills.

Brain Bashers. Find plenty of video games at this site that are meant to sharpen your mental prowess.

Fit Brains. These games are designed by scientists to develop your brain power.

BrainTraining 101. Logic, puzzle, memory, classic, and action games are the focus of this website’s brain games.

Read the rest of the list here.

NYC’s public gaming school enters first semester, teaching with ‘Troggles’

Chris — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:23:21 PDT

From Joystiq:

The first semester of New York City’s Quest to Learn began last week on the 9th, with an inaugural class of around 75 sixth graders in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood taking classes that employ games (of all types) in learning. "One thing I want to emphasize: this is not a school about just playing video games … this is a school that uses the system of games to deliver rich discussion," the school’s principal, Aaron Schwartz, told Joystiq over the phone this morning. "We use games as a medium here." Education at Quest to Learn is delivered through a variety of means other than games, though game systems are a focus for teaching the specific subset of student that Q2L targets: "digital kids."

Buddhist leader says video games are cathartic

Chris — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:18:10 PDT

From Times of India (via Joystiq):

Is that why you play war games on your play station because many might say it’s inappropriate for a Buddhist monk dedicated to peace to play war games?

Well, I view video games as something of an emotional therapy, a mundane level of emotional therapy for me. We all have emotions whether we’re Buddhist practitioners or not, all of us have emotions, happy emotions, sad emotions, displeased emotions and we need to figure out a way to deal with them when they arise.

So, for me sometimes it can be a relief, a kind of decompression to just play some video games. If I’m having some negative thoughts or negative feelings, video games are one way in which I can release that energy in the context of the illusion of the game. I feel better afterwards.

The aggression that comes out in the video game satiates whatever desire I might have to express that feeling. For me, that’s very skilful because when I do that I don’t have to go and hit anyone over the head.

Tetris can alter the structure of your brain

Chris — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:22:40 PDT

From Wired:

Playing Tetris actually gives you more brain to work with, says a new study to be published later this week.

The study, funded by Tetris’ makers and authored by investigators at the Mind Research Network in New Mexico, shows that playing the classic puzzle game had two distinct effects on the brains of research subjects: some areas in the brain showed greater efficiency (the blue areas in the diagram above), and different areas showed thicker cortexes, which is a sign of more grey matter (red).

This, says the doctors who undertook the study, shows that focusing on a "challenging visuospatial task" like a videogame can actually alter the structure of the brain, not just increase brain activity.

Quantify the burn with the Wii Fit Calorie Meter

Chris — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:00:12 PDT

From Joystiq:

Why doesn’t Wii Fit include an estimate of the calories you burn during exercises? That would be really useful. Nintendo seems to agree, at least — it has created a Flash application that does just that.

The Wii Fit Calorie Meter couldn’t be easier to use, unless it were in English! Push the big green button in the middle to start, then enter your weight (in kilograms). You can then click on each exercise you’ve done (or plan to do) and tell the calculator the number of sets you’ve done of each. The app will add up your calories as you go!

Wii-Dum, Wii-Step & Wii-Skab – Nintendo controllers beginning to border the ridiculous

Chris — Tue, 05 May 2009 06:57:34 PDT

From TechDigest:

With the Wii Fit proving to be bigger than Jesus right now, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to see more Nintendo controller accessories thrust into the market, but somehow it is, especially when we’re talking dumbbells, a step and a skateboard.

You can fit the WiiMote straight into the 1.7lb WiDums and use them to tone your triceps in WiiFit, Jillian Michaels, Golds Gym Cardio, EA Sports Active and Fitness Ultimatum 2005. What fun they all sound like. In three months time, they also double as very handy paperweights.

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The unfortunately named WiSkab attaches directly to the Balance Board and allows you to tilt and pump in all kinds of directions as if you were gliding on wheels or snow. It’s the size of a full size skate deck and will work with Skate it, Shaun White Snowboarding and We Ski and Snowboard.

YMCA video games focus on kids’ fitness

Chris — Tue, 05 May 2009 06:54:53 PDT

From Tuscaloosa News:

This scene isn’t out of a science fiction novel — it happened Saturday afternoon at the YMCA of Tuscaloosa County, where Jones and a host of other children got their first look at “Lightspace,” a game in the center’s new Kids Zone.

After taking the stairs directly ahead of the front desk, the room of red, yellow and blue-painted walls opens up and is filled with video games that kids play with their bodies, not hand-held controllers.

Byron Langdon, YMCA sports director, said the YMCA needed a place that kids between the ages of 6 and 14 could hang out, since they are too big for day care and too young to use the facility’s fitness center.

Langdon said the idea for the new area came from a Chicago YMCA that recently added the same program to their facility with the help of Motion Fitness, a company that sells and installs the games.

After touring the Chicago YMCA, Langdon said he knew it would be the perfect addition to the new Kids Zone. With the help of the YMCA Men’s Club, the idea became a reality.

“Motion Fitness came in the first part of April and installed the games and we played with them for a few weeks to make sure everything was working,” he said.

Anti-obesity TV ads to promote ‘active videogames’

Chris — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:15:49 PDT

From guardian.co.uk:

The government is to launch an anti-obesity TV campaign that aims to promote the virtue of children playing videogames such as those for Nintendo’s Wii that require physical activity.

This marks a rapid U-turn by the government, weeks after it angered the games industry with a press campaign which implied that sitting inside playing games could lead to an early death.

The Department of Health’s new TV campaign, the latest stage of the government’s £75m anti-obesity advertising strategy, aims to push the message that not enough children are doing the recommended 60 minutes a day of some form of physical activity.

In the TV ad, which breaks tonight, the animated Change4Life family find ways to give kids 60 minutes of activity a day.

Solutions include playing videogames that require physical exertion – typified by products such as Nintendo’s popular Wii Sports and Wii Fit games franchises – as well as walking to school and playing in the park.

EA Sports Active to get more add-ons

Chris — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:08:51 PDT

From Pocket-lint:

"Active is a platform not a game", Moore told us in a one to one interview after flying over from America to see us.

Rather than merely offering downloadable content, Moore outlined to Pocket-lint that fans of the game would likely see expansion packs based around specific areas like football, baseball or tennis, as well as specific fitness packs that would allow you to get fit.

One such suggestion is for an "abs pack", to help people hone certain areas of their body.

According to EA, the game, which has seen a strong marketing push with stars such as Davina McCall involved, has already garnered plenty of pre-orders ahead of its launch.

Mental exercise: neurofeedback helps athletes sharpen focus

Chris — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:06:23 PDT

From McGill Reporter:

For the past four years, a small team of Masters students led by Prof. Gordon Bloom, Director of the McGill Sport Psychology Research Laboratory, has been quietly conducting bio/neurofeedback training with dozens of elite athletes, including skiers, skaters and hockey players. The goal of the program, funded through Sport Canada and the Centre nationale multisport in Montreal: help Canada’s Olympians achieve peak performance at the Vancouver games next winter.

Neurofeedback training, designed to enable people to alter their brain activity, has been used widely in the treatment of conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. But relatively little rigorous work has been done on adapting the technique to help give top athletes a mental edge.

Bloom’s student-trainers conduct individual sessions in the McGill Seagram Sport Science Centre or at a satellite lab in Olympic Stadium. The athlete, seated in front of a computer, has sensors placed on the scalp and ears to monitor brainwaves. The athletes can see their brain activity on the computer screen – and learn gradually, through exercises such as video-game simulations, to produce patterns closer to the desired form.