Saturday, May 3, 2008

Monkeyball surgery

Here's an article about the benefits to surgeons of playing computer games, http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/01/17/surgeons-hone-skills-on-nintendo-wii/
I remember when this study first came out it was about the benefits of the Monkeyball games on gamecube, and it was of great comfort to the med student i was living with at the time that his time wasn't being wasted playing Monkeyballs. This article refers mainly to the Nintendo Wii but the idea is the same, that certain games improve fine motor control. In addition to this they improve depth perception for microsurgery. It's prety obvious really in that both have a screen that only has a representation of depth. Playing the games helps the surgeons recognise depth for when they are directing little cameras around inside you.
As a side note, i can attest to the benefits of such games for fine motor skills as during the summer when we were playing these games the Palace hotel had a promo on where they had one of those machines where you lead a wire through a path without touching the edges, if you touch the edges a buzzer goes off as you have completed a circuit. If you moved the wire all the way through you got a prize. Needless to say the palace lost quite a few hip flasks and aviators to the 5 of us.

1 comment:

russell lowe said...

Jules, I have a great clip advertising the Wii. About half way through they show a game where a guy is playing the dentist. The scope for all of these entertainment devices to cross over to edutainment (without being all "learning game") is immense.