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Video Game Provides Framework For Solving Genomic Sequence Alignment Problems

gene-puzzle-game

Over the past year our genetic understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer has been accelerated by thousands of video gamers thanks to an online flash game called Phylo. Phylo is a video game created by Dr. Jérôme Waldispuhl of the McGill Centre for BioInformatics and collaborator Mathieu Blanchette. The game itself is a framework for solving the common problem of multiple sequence alignments in comparative genomics and leverages the visual problem solving skills of online gamers.

The Phylo website explains the background to game: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

New Video Game-Based Fitness Devices

Electronic Arts, the video game development company, has announced its next generation of fitness tools. Following up on its popular EA SPORTS Active product line, the release scheduled for this fall should include a heart rate monitor, arm and leg accelerometers, and an online program to track and share one’s workouts. The name for the new system has yet to be finalized, so for now EA just tacked on a “2.0” to the end of the current name. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Brain Size Does Matter: When It Comes To Video Games

To the delight of video game enthusiasts, a new study coming out of MIT has discovered a relationship between the size of certain structures in the brain and the ability to perform in video games. The researchers analyzed the size of specific brain regions of the participants using high-resolution MRI. They then had participants play Space Fortress, (pictured) a game that makes Asteroids look like a technological marvel.

Here is more from the press release:

Half of the study participants were asked to focus on maximizing their overall score in a video game while paying equal attention to the various components of the game. The other participants had to periodically shift priorities, improving their skills in one area for a period of time while also maximizing their success at the other tasks. The latter approach, called “variable priority training,” encourages the kind of flexibility in decision-making that is commonly required in daily life, according to Kramer. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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