FROM WIRED

Researchers Use MRI to Predict Your Gaming Prowess


How can you tell if you’re a natural gaming pro? Researchers say they need look no further than your basal ganglia.

Psychology professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said Thursday that they can now predict with what they call “unprecedented accuracy” a person’s skills at videogames and other complex tasks by first studying certain areas of their brains. The study, “Predicting Individual’s Learning Success From Patterns of Pre-Learning MRI Activity,” will be published in online journal PLoS One.

“Our data suggest that some persistent physiological and or neuroanatomical difference is actually the predictor of learning,” said University of Illinois psychology professor and research leader Art Kramer in a statement.

The researchers first found subjects who had not previously spent much time playing videogames. Then, they imaged their brains with MRI scans before having them play a videogame called Space Fortress, developed by the university.

This was the game used in last year’s study, by some of the same researchers, that first showed the correlation between brain size and game aptitude.


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From WIRED


SCVNGR Unleashes Zombie Horde Through Social Check-In Feature
By Michael Andersen   October 27, 2010  |  9:54 pm

Image: Courtesy SCVNGR
Geo-locative troublemakers at SCVNGR have unleashed a zombie apocalypse on poor, unsuspecting smartphone users. What will you do to guard yourself from infection this Halloween season?

By Michael Andersen, originally posted at ARGNet

Geo-locative check-in app SCVNGR has pulled off some crazy stunts in the past few months. Modernista used the app to lead Dexter fans to a kill room set up at Comic-Con in San Diego, and the New England Patriots used it to help nose tackle Vince Wilfork recover his Super Bowl XXXIX ring.

But this time, SCVNGR has gone too far. It’s unleashed zombies.

Or at least, zombie badges. Just in time for Halloween, SCVNGR has infected 10 SCVNGR players with a Zombie badge. Once infected, these hapless souls will be informed of their sad state, and are doomed to wander the streets, spreading the infection.

The transmission vector? SCVNGR’s new social check-in feature, where players can earn points by bumping phones together. Normally, engaging in unprotected bumping lets players earn points, with the rewards increasing based on the size of the group. When a player bumps with a zombified SCVNGR user, all the users in the group become infected with the zombie badge.

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