Forwarded by a friend: NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Virtual reality isn’t just fun for kids — it might also be able to help many stroke patients on their way to recovery, hints a Canadian summary of the research on the technology. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110504/hl_nm/us_virtual_reality_stroke_1 It’s a Reuters summary of a new report in the journal Stroke, […]

Portal2 released yesterday. The kids immediately downloaded it via Steam and went to work in co-operative problem solving mode. I watched for a bit a realized it’s an essentially non-violent (no shooting anyway) first-person perspective game based on puzzle-solving. But it might require the same kinds of visuo-spatial skills that get trained in the shooter […]

Red Bull has a nice series of videos with athletes performing while being recording at 1000 frames per second. Maybe we should use these videos for pre-instruction and see if we can create some mega-athletes. http://www.redbullusa.com/cs/Satellite/en_US/Sports/001242947016621

I was on the radio on Wednesday evening talking about memory with host Milt Rosenberg on his show Extension720.  With me was Dr. Raj Shah from the Rush ADRC.  I think it went pretty well overall, although I think I’m still learning how to talk about memory and my research in this type of way. […]

I was contacted by the Alzheimer’s Forum last week to ask for comment on a paper that just came out in Neuron. The report is:  Ludmer R, Dudai Y, Rubin N. Uncovering camouflage: amygdala activation predicts long-term memory of induced perceptual insight. Neuron. 10 March 2011;69:1002-1014. Abstract It’s an interesting result.  How might it be […]

Today, another brief history lesson: Edward Thorndike, old-school (very: 1874 – 1949) learning and memory researcher. From wikipedia: Thorndike specified three conditions that maximizes learning: The law of effect stated that the likely recurrence of a response is generally governed by its consequence or effect generally in the form of reward or punishment. The law […]

Sometimes people (including me) wonder why South Korea seems to be the international epicenter of professional competitive video game play.  While I wonder about cultural influences (thanks to Joan Chiao), it has been suggested that it is simply this: Why you should be jealous of South Korea (link to American Prospect recap of NY Times […]

I forget why the idea of possible gender differences in some skill learning studies came up at lab meeting, but I remember I digressed into discussion of gender differences in sciences.  Lo and behold, data on this topic are on the front page of Crooked Timber (group philosophy, politics, science blog).  And they have data! […]

Apparently everybody plays Angry Birds.  Why is it so popular? So I downloaded the app to my iphone and have played through a few levels.  I’m not sure why it’s so sticky.  The “what happens if I try this” hook that gets you to take another shot at a difficult puzzle and gets you to […]

COgnitive Neuroscience of Gaming Alliance I think we should form this thing. I find it amusing that we made a task inspired by video games, and other researchers are just like, “Why bother doing more work? Just use the video game!” Art Kramer’s stuff is apparently making its way across the tech blogosphere. Coolness. Wired: […]