Have a go at Open Heart Surgery. Definitely not for the faint of heart. With a simulated heart monitor beeping away, the pressure is on to perform. There’s a choice of three levels – intern, surgeon, and specialist. I should have chosen intern but I wanted to be the top gun. Bad move. As a specialist, I killed the patient within seconds. I was advised to ‘call my lawyer’.

Or maybe something a little less challenging – performing open heart surgery on a stuffed bunny . Easy you think! Think again! You have 60 seconds to shock the heart, make an incision, do some intraoperative tasks and then suture the poor bunny back up.  I tried but the poor bunny did not survive.

Don’t know about you, but my dream of being a (successful) surgeon was fading away…

But then I found Heart Operations and my faith in my abilities was restored. This is heart surgery without pressure. I soon discovered I had a hidden talent for transplant, bypass, hole in
the heart, and valve replacement surgery. In other words, no one died.

So what are you waiting for?

Gown up, grab your scalpel and start cutting…

It’s a guaranteed fun-filled (not to mention educational) way for the whole family to kill time together.

All the fun with none of the blood and gore…

(image source)

Post from: Healthbolt

 A recent UK study has found that playing the computer based puzzle game Tetris soon after witnessing a traumatic event might just help erase memories of the events witnessed.

In the study, forty participants between the ages of 18 and 47 were subjected to a 12 minute video that featured horrific images of physical injury and death. After watching the video, all the participants were then kept busy for the next half hour filling out forms. Then 20 of the participants were installed in front of computers screens and instructed to play Tetris for 10 minutes. The other 20 participants were left to sit quietly with nothing to do.

The results:

Those playing Tetris apparently reported less flashbacks to the images of injury and death they had witnessed in the video than those who had simply sat and did nothing. Even a week later, the participants who played Tetris continued to report less flashbacks.

The study’s authors have labeled using computer games in this way a “cognitive vaccine” – a means of preventing traumatic memories from sinking into your consciousness. 

Could Tetris be the answer for the up to one in five US military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from post traumatic stress disorder ? 

Post from: Healthbolt

Sounds bizarre but researchers at the University of Washington are hoping that Foldit, a new computer game will help uncover the key to medical mysteries ranging from Alzheimer’s Disease to vaccines.

There are more than 100,000 different kinds of proteins in the human body. These proteins form cells, make up the immune system, and determine the speed of chemical reactions.

Scientists already know the genetic sequence of many of the proteins but not how they fold up into the complext shapes that play the crucial biological roles within the human body.

This is where Foldit comes in.

This computer game will allow players to manipulate on-screen images of protein chains and attempt to predict their folding patterns. Points are earned for every chemically stable folded protein they create. The more they create, the more they earn. The reward – maybe one day the Nobel Prize in Medicine according to the game’s creators.

In recent game trials, hundreds of players were provided with 40 protein puzzles (the folding solutions already known to the game makers) to solve and most of the players were able to find the correct structure faster than the computer could.

The next step is to provide players with proteins with unknown folding patterns and let them do the research in protein structure prediction through game playing.

Sounds like a unique form of scientific outsourcing.

This might be the one computer game that parents will encourage their children to play…

You can download it here.

(Source)

Post from: Healthbolt