Does Your McDreamy Play PacMan?

CNN.com is reporting that surgeons who play video games perform better than doctors that do not play video games.

From the article:

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."

Maybe that's why House, one of my favorite television characters, can be seen playing with his DS or PSP in many of the episodes.

Labels: culture, gaming

  ¶ posted by Rocco Mandaglio, Staff Writer @ 3/07/2007 03:33:00 PM