BIOFEEDBACK
Playing videogames may be just what the doctor ordered for kids suffering from attention deficit disorder. In a recent study, PlayStation games were used successfully to treat children diagnosed with ADD, which affects an estimated 5 to 7 percent of elementary school students nationwide.
Researchers used off-the-shelf games to teach children biofeedback. In the traditional method, patients learn to modify their brain waves by monitoring waveform data from sensors placed on their scalps. By learning to increase waves to around 12 Hz, a stress-free range, patients are able to relax and improve their concentration. With enough practice, they can re-create that state.
But getting hyperactive kids to sit and watch their brain waves on a computer screen is almost impossible. So researchers at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk turned to videogames to administer biofeedback.
A group of children with ADD played a series of games, including Gran Turismo, 3Xtreme, and Spyro the Dragon, on modified Sony PlayStations. Sensors attached to each child's scalp measured his brain wave activity, and the signals were fed through a processing unit to the PlayStation controllers. As the child's brain waves approached an optimal pattern, the controller became more responsive, encouraging the child to produce those brain-wave patterns to succeed at the game.
The medical researchers teamed up with NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, which had developed a patented technology to measure pilots' responses to flight simulators. "Flight simulators are essentially very sophisticated videogames," explains Langley scientist Alan Pope.
Not surprisingly, the kids preferred the joystick treatment to traditional biofeedback techniques. "They achieved results in half the usual time," reports lead researcher Olafur Palsson, now a visiting scientist at University of North Carolina's School of Medicine. "Their brains were lured into changing their behavior in a healthy way."
NASA is negotiating with several companies to produce consumer versions of the system. This winter, East3 (www.east3.com), a tech-development firm based in Richmond, Virginia, is releasing a videogame-based attention trainer for children.
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