The American Management on sanitary inspection behind quality of foodstuff and medicines has given permission for the use of computer games EndeavorRx as medicines. This summer, patients can receive a prescription from a doctor. Its main users will be children with attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity.
EndeavorRx the game – racing simulator with flexible changeable environment. She just looks like a normal toy, but in reality this is a training complex for the prefrontal cortex. The game analyzes the player’s actions and with the help of adaptive algorithms picks up for him a suitable job. The technique was licensed in the laboratory of Adam Gazzali, a neuroscientist at the University of California in San Francisco.
Lead developer of the game, Craig Ferguson, complains of bureaucrats who do not want to recognize the therapeutic potential of the games. For example, in the fight against depression, it is very important to break the vicious circle where the patient does not want to do anything for fear of failure. The game gives him a task and motivation, encourages to make a new attempt, even when losing. And it does not put forward any criticism, no subjective assessments or attempts to influence a person.
Doctor of psychology at Harvard, Chelsea Wilkes, talks about this side of games like extortion of money, donation of the players. There are lots of methods of gross and subtle techniques of psychological influence on the player with this goal, plus in the interests of business are constantly being developed new. So why not pay them for good – not to create a system of incentives that will encourage the patient to play an even more active, to grow and to heal?
Source — IEEE