National Science Foundation report: Can interactive media boost attention and well-being?

“Behavioral training interventions have received much interest as potentially efficient and cost-effective ways to maintain brain fitness or enhance skilled performance with impact ranging from health and fitness to education and job training. In particular, neuroscience research has documented the importance of explicitly training (i) attentional control, in order to enhance perceptual and cognitive fitness as well as (ii) kindness and compassion, to produce changes in adaptive emotional regulation and well-being. At the same time, video game play has become pervasive throughout all layers of current society, thus providing a potentially unique vehicle to deliver such controlled training at home in a highly engaging and cost-efficient manner. Yet, several gaps remain in terms of realizing the true potential of the medium for positive impact, as developing engaging and effective research-based games anchored in neuroscientific principles that can have scalable, sustainable publishing models presents several new inter-disciplinary challenges.” At an August 2012 meeting hosted by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and sponsored by the National Science Foundation, a panel of international experts identified 5 main areas of focus to help raise the sector of scientifically validated games designed to boost well-being or attention:  Click here to continue reading (opens Full Report as PDF in new window). To Learn More: Workshop on Interactive Media, Att...
Source: SharpBrains - Category: Neurologists Authors: Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Health & Wellness Technology attention attentional control behavioral training Brain-Fitness cognitive-fitness compassion emotional-regulation interactive media National Science Foundation videogames well-b Source Type: blogs