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.
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