Workshop: Enhancing Well-being and Attentional Control through Games and Interactive Media: A Neuroscientific Approach

University Of Rochester, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

Behavioral training interventions have received much interest as an efficient and cost effective way to maintain brain fitness or enhance skilled performance with impact ranging from health to job training. In particular, neuroscience and behavioral research has documented the importance of explicitly training attentional control, in order to enhance perceptual and cognitive fitness, physical exercise, to promote physical fitness and rehabilitation as well as kindness and compassion, to produce changes in adaptive emotion regulation and well-being. During this same time period, video game play has become pervasive throughout all layers of society providing a potentially unique vehicle to deliver such controlled training at home in a cost-efficient manner. Given the potential impact of these interactive systems, it is necessary to understand the underlying scientific principles that govern the development and deployment of interactive computer games in healthcare and education. The search for the deeper understanding requires the involvement of expertise from a wide variety of areas ranging from neuroscience to computer science and engineering. To this end, the workshop brought together experts from a wide range of academic disciplines with engineers and software developers. The goals of the workshop was to identify the remaining challenges and roadblocks that represent barriers in making these sophisticated interactive systems to be among the key components supporting the future healthcare delivery with emphasis on prevention and quality of life. This workshop provided a unique opportunity to define new approaches to the design, assessment and distribution of video games for enhancing well-being and attention, opening a unique path to addressing key health care and societal concerns in a user-friendly and cost effective manner