Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Diseased brains on display
PERU (Reuters) - A woman looks at a human brain with a neurological disorder at the brain museum in Lima in this February 15, 2007 picture. Diana Rivas runs a little-known brain museum in the Peruvian capital. She claims it is the only public display of human brains in the world.
Surgeons who play video games are more skilled: study
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Playing video games appears to help surgeons with skills that truly count: how well they operate using a precise technique, a study said on Monday.
There was a strong correlation between video game skills and a surgeon's capabilities performing laparoscopic surgery in the study published in the February issue of Archives of Surgery.
Laparoscopy and related surgeries involve manipulating instruments through a small incision or body opening where the surgeon's movements are guided by watching a television screen.
Video game skills translated into higher scores on a day-and-half-long surgical skills test, and the correlation was much higher than the surgeon's length of training or prior experience in laparoscopic surgery, the study said.
Out of 33 surgeons from Beth Israel Medical Center in New York that participated in the study, the nine doctors who had at some point played video games at least three hours per week made 37 percent fewer errors, performed 27 percent faster, and scored 42 percent better in the test of surgical skills than the 15 surgeons who had never played video games before.
"It was surprising that past commercial video game play was such a strong predictor of advanced surgical skills," said Iowa State University psychology professor Douglas Gentile, one of the study's authors.
It supports previous research that video games can improve "fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, visual attention, depth perception and computer competency," the study said.
Nostradamus: His Life and Prophecies
A 1998 documentary on Nostradamus' prophecies, containing various quality newsreel footages of his 'hits and misses'. (1 hr 26 min)
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