Video game may help detect depression

[wraggster]

via newscitech

A popular video game could provide doctors with a way of diagnosing depression.

With some illnesses, such as diabetes, a simple test can usually quantify how severe a person's condition is, but depression is more complicated. The condition has been linked to a shrunken hippocampus, a part of the brain that also plays a role in spatial memory, so Neda Gould at the US National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and her colleagues wondered whether a video game that tests spatial memory could help measure the severity of the illness.

To test their idea the researchers developed a game based on some scenes from Duke Nukem, a game in which players navigate around a virtual town. The participants, who were already familiar with the town, were asked to find their way to as many landmarks as possible within a set amount of time.

Depressed people found their way to an average of 2.4 locations compared with 3.8 locations for healthy controls. Indeed, the more depressed a person was, the lower the score (The American Journal of Psychiatry, vol 164, p 516). Gould hopes the test may eventually provide a quantifiable measure of depression.

[samthegreat68]

i dont know about this. i have trouble remembering maps on Counter Strike, or just about any FPS, even Duke Nukem. am i one depressed sonofabitch or what?

[TeenDev]

this is of no use to me. I already know im depressed! I havent done homework in 3 weeks!

[devdj]

well when it $#@!s to video games i adapt quite well cause i kind of have a photographic memory of maps for fps like duke nukem
medal of honor only after playing them for a short time.

[ComixSans]

If i spead to many hours playing computer games i get depressed and think i could be doing better things with my life. As a result i speand hours thinking about playing computer games, feeling depressed and thinking i could be doing better things with my life.

Then i get giddy and start proding people.