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

interactivemediaBehav­ioral 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).

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About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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