USNIMH
Latest
Duke Nukem and the battle against depression
No, Duke Nukem Forever hasn't received a name change (or a release date) -- but there's now a possible explanation for why you've been getting pwned by bubbly 12-year-olds on Xbox Live. Dude, you're depressed.According to a study by the US National Institute of Mental Health, depression sufferers were outperformed by their "healthy" peers in a test that used scenes based on Duke Nukem. It would seem that tests relying on spatial memory -- in this case, locating landmarks in a virtual gameworld -- might provide a method for quantifying depression. Apparently subjects suffering from deep levels of depression located the least number of landmarks. Previous research suggests that depression might be associated with a shrunken hippocampus, a part of the brain that processes spatial memory.[Via Engadget]
