In the not-so-new department, the Telegraph reports on a “new” study that says video games activate men’s primal instincts of conquering.

The Standford Daily first reported on this a couple of months ago and we commented on the report. So what does this new report bring in?

It gets more into the nitty-gritty of the study. They apparently put gamers through MRI scanners to find the spots in the brain that are affected by play. The report goes on to cite this disparity between men and women as the reason why men are more into games than women.

But frankly, I don’t buy it. I think it’s more cultural than anything else and that’s from firsthand experience. So take that science; we don’t need you.

Video games are good, but like all things, they should be done in moderation.

So I kind of agree with this recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics that says:

1. boys should take at least 11,000 steps a day;
2. girls should take at least 13,000 steps a day; and
3. children should limit total screen time to two hours a day.

Of course, you risk making your child a cultural leper, but hey, it’s a small price to pay for your health. Of course, you may be able to kill two birds with one stone by letting them play video games where they exercise: Dance Dance Revolution is being used as a PE device in West Virginia; Nintendo is coming out with its Wii Fit in May and Ubisoft’s My Weight Loss Coach actually comes with a pedometer and gives advice about diet.

Via Science Daily

The next time you’re in an operating room, you should ask your surgeon if they played a video game that day.

According to a Newsday story, doctors in residence at Waterbury Hospital in Conneticut are using titles like Atari Brick Breaker to warm up before surgeries.

Apparently, the folks there buy into a a 2004 study that says surgeons who play games prior to a mock surgery do better. The folks at Waterbury Hospital are just putting that idea into practice with a video game Olympics and video game training sessions.

Surgeons or soccer players? More on the jump

In the interesting studies department, Dr John Charlton of the University of Bolton and Ian Danforth of Whitman College says that gamers with hardcore addiction show a lot of the same characters as those with Aspergers Syndrome.

Researchers found that the more players were addicted to games, the more they displayed negative personality traits. More specifically, these traits were neuroticism, and lack of extraversion and agreeableness, and according to Charlton, all of these characteristics are associated with Aspergers.

Here’s the researchers’ explanation: Although game addicts don’t haveAspergers syndrome but share some of the same, they exhibit similar behavior because they find it easier to empathize with computer systems than other people.

Via Lucidlan

The dumb-study-of-the-week award goes to the German team at the “elite Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich.”

According to a report in Canada.com, researchers there say that playing driving games such as Need for Speed and Midnight Racer “increases risk-taking behaviour in critical road traffic situations.”

I don’t necessarily agree with the study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. First off, they replicate a self-reporting survey used at the British Driving School, which is admittedly unreliable. The second “experiment” the researchers have done is testing video games effects with another video game. This is something I don’t get.
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As Gieson mentioned a few days ago we received copies of Bully: Scholarship Edition for the Xbox 360 and Wii. He took the Wii version, I took the 360 version.

As most of you probably know this game has been subjected to quite a bit of controversy. Well before the original Bully came out parents and teachers groups, once they heard it was from the GTA people and was about a school bully, were racing to condemn the game and demand it be banned. Florida actually considered it but ultimately didn’t.

This is going to come as a shock but it all turned out to be a typical Jack Thompson overreaction. The game was released and civilization as we know it did not end. As it turns out it didn’t instigate anything.

Of course if these groups didn’t have to know anything about the original to deem it awful, they certainly aren’t going to give any weight to history. Once again teachers groups are attacking the game. Because apparently it might cause civilization to end now that the graphics are better, I don’t know.

But maybe they’re right this time. It does deserve some research. Therefore I’m volunteering myself as a test subject to scientifically determine if the game does the horrible things its critics claim.

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