In celebration of the approaching New Year, I present a list of my most popular science stories of 2009. Taken from the vast expanse of all fields of science, they may not be everyone's top ten, but they are among the top news makers and will have repercussions well past the ending days of 2009.
When I ask Dr. Herz for the story of Wii-hab, he starts with a confession:
“I'm a gaming person in hiding.”
That set off a round of laughter and told the tale perfectly: only an occupational therapist who followed the world of Nintendo and Playstation would have immediately seen the Wii as something more than just a leap in gaming style. He saw an opportunity to help people.
In a time when Wiis were as rare as flawless emeralds, Dr. Nathan 'Ben' Herz, director of Occupational Therapy at Medical College of Georgia, collected 19 of the consoles for his research (herding in a round 20 after his mother proclaimed that she wanted one as well). His hunt earned him the title of Dr. Wii at local stores, an unlikely name that may lead a revolution.
“Virtual reality and gaming is the future of rehab,” he asserts. And his proof of that concept: a small study of Parkinson's patients that showed the substantial changes a limited amount of gaming can exact.
For four weeks, patients played the tennis, bowling, and boxing games in the Wii Sports package three times a week for an hour. At the beginning and end of that month, the participants were run through a gamut of tests to look for improvement in Parkinson's symptoms such as rigidity of motion and the amount of time it takes to do a task. While almost every area improved, one statistic sticks out in particular: depression levels dropped to nearly zero.
“The results were amazing,” Herz says. “The [change in] depression itself is huge.”
For an occupational therapist, who cannot treat with medication, seeing such a strong change in mood with rehab techniques is the best one could hope for. And while no neurological tests have been conducted to physically show what is causing the change, Herz has a hypothesis for the reason depression vanishes.
“We know that exercise increases dopamine,” he says. Lots of dopamine, of course, makes us happy. “And [through new research] we also know that video games increases dopamine. So here I am getting the exercise effect using video games.” It's like getting a double whammy of dopamine, he adds.
Though the scientific numbers were impressive, the stories that come from the research go straight to the heart. As news of this study went viral on the internet and in the media, CNN conducted an interview with one of Herz's patients [video can be found here]. In it, the patient states that because of the improvements he saw during the four weeks of the study, he kept up the regiment with the Wii long after the official tests ended in hopes that he would be steady and able enough to walk his daughter down the aisle.
“[He says] the only reason he could dance his first dance with her is because of the work that we did and the fact that he was introduced to the Wii,” says Herz.
There are other stories, too, of a man whose Wii Age (an anecdotal measurement the console uses to show a person's increase in reaction time and activity level) went from 80 years to 40, a drop in half a virtual lifetime.
Though the study was small, his results had such a strong statistical significance (the measurement scientists use to tell if the numbers in a study show a real change from normal results) that he is cruising on to other studies, including research into Wii Fit, the difference between immersion gaming like the Wii and traditional thumb-controller gaming, and Project Natal, Microsoft's own immersion gaming system.
The worry now is about money. “Getting the money to do a long-term study on video games is going to be kind of difficult,” he admits. “The money's just not out there for this type of research.” He is thankful for the grants he received from the National Parkinson’s Foundation to do this research, and hopes that more funding can be found.
But even with the initial scramble to find the elusive Wiis and the constant battle for funding, Herz is optimistic because of the changes he can see in a patient's quality of life after just a few sessions with the console. “For me, you know, scientifically it's great,” he says. “But more importantly for me, life-wise, it's all worth it.”
>> Next story on the list: Flu virus 'paralyzes' the immune system
Check out the rest of the top ten science stories of 2009 here.
Original coverage of this story can be found here.
See the the top ten of 2008.
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