A positive video-games news item...

[ThunderPeel2001]

Eat THIS, Jack Thompson!!!!!!!

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn11351?

(Note to Jack: I was being ironic.)

[elmuerte]

Depressed people found their way to an average of 2.4 locations compared with 3.8 locations for healthy controls. Indeed, the more depressed a person was, the lower the score.

Well, that doesn't do any good for their depression.

But and an interesting find nonetheless

[miffy495]

Well, I don't really see how that tells us anything new. The medical community has known for years that depression has negative effects on aptitude for anything else. The idea of quantifying depression is pretty cool though. The DSM IV really doesn't allow for a whole lot aside from the doctor's side notes of "mild" or "severe" so a yardstick, Video game or not, is a pretty important development.

[JoannaDark]

there are already tons of scales, questionnaires etc for measuring this, e.g. beck which has been validated over thousands of cases.

[DanJW]

It might lead to a treatment - if depression is associated with a shrunken hippocampus, then the right spatial awareness exercises could conceivably build it up and counter the depression. That's just a hypothesis though.

[JoannaDark]

it's a great area. i'm involved in research very like this at the moment. are you a big psych nerd too dan?