Nasa - The gamer's quest is for reality, but there are limits when an animated, armored man is shooting at a banshee flying at him at simulated warp speed on a video screen; or a caricature of an athlete is trying to hit a light that represents a ball that can curve in ways that defy physics.And logic.
This is the world in which NASA's Langley Research Center scientists Alan Pope and Chad Stephens worked with Langley Volunteer Service Program high school intern Nina Blanson until she decamped to become a freshman at Yale.
They have invented technology to inject stress levels into the games' controls so that the nervous or stressed shooter is aiming a moving gun at a moving target. The technology has a long, somewhat descriptive, acronym-defying name, but the inventors are just calling it "Mindshift" and are inviting representatives of the gaming industry to a demonstration on September 22 in Raleigh, N.C.
It includes a sensor attached to the player's earlobe, checking the pulse and wired into the control. Or sensors attached to the forehead, seeking the facial muscle strain that is a sign of stress.
Or even sensors attached to the player's partner to inject a social variable into game play, requiring teamwork between the two players. At issue is understanding that video games are with us, so why not involve them in the monitoring and treatment of stress?
"You don't have to do everything in a disciplined way," said Pope, whose field of expertise is engineering psychophysiology and biomedical feedback. "You can also do it recreationally.
"There are some people who claim that playing video games contributes to attention deficit, that it rewires our brains. Well, if that's the case then let's decide how we want video games rewiring our brain."
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