Surgical Gaming
By Gregory Kellett, a cognitive neuroscience researcher at SFSU and UCSF, and science writer for Lumos Labs.
Video game play seems to be related to better surgical skills according to research showcased at the recent Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.
Iowa State University psychologist Douglas Gentile, PhD, ran an experiment looking at the video game experience of 33 budding surgeons and how this related to performance during surgical training.
The numbers showed that:
- Past video game play in excess of 3 hrs/wk correlated with 37% fewer errors and a 27% increase in speed (over non-video-game players) during training exercises.
- Video game skill (as measured by high scores) were a significant predictor of demonstrated surgical skills.
Although this doesn’t necessarily translate as cause and effect, it seems plausible that exercising fine motor control, visual attention processing, reaction time, hand-eye coordination and 2-dimensional depth perception might just improve one’s ability to wield a scalpel.
References:
Rosser, J. C., Lynch, P. J., Cuddihy, L., Gentile, D. A., Klonsky, J., & Merrell, R. (2007). The Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st Century. Arch Surg, 142(2), 181-186.
Dorval, M., & Pépin, M. (1986). Effect of playing a video game on a measure of spatial visualization. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 62(1), 159-62.
Sep 01, 2008
[...] can maybe get equal ability his math as boys through playing the computer game Medal of honor. We now learned that doctors who play more than 3 hrs per week make 37% less mistakes when the perform [...]
Sep 01, 2008
K, I’m pretty sure I have the highest score in “Lost in Migration” with 6325 and a BPI of like 1495… anyone out there better?
Sep 04, 2008
One of the integral ideas is that it is necessary to consider a situation from every angle for example video game playing might be associated with different classes in society or different levels of health i.e. perhaps more relaxation and less gross motor development. However when presenting it makes sense that only the most significant aspects are presented and that training something similar produces a positive effect on a related skill is a common day to day experience and great to hear as part of developing ideas and beliefs about brain training.
A lot of people seem to work themselves up to 1500 plus.
Sep 09, 2008
I agree with you integral