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US Navy: Gamers '10 to 20%' better at fighting terror
[Image Source] The Office of Naval Research is currently conducting research in video game training that it says has "surprising" results in regards to military personnel reaction time and adaptability in the fight against terror. According to an article available on the Department of Defense's official website, doctor of educational psychology and program officer Ray Perez said the research has discovered that video game players perform "10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability" than non-gamers. Citing a need for soldiers to be "agile problem solvers" and "agile thinkers," Perez notes that video game training can help field adaptability and the "cognitive advances" derived from the training can last up to two and a half years. "We know that video games can increase perceptual abilities and short-term memory," Perez said, adding games allow players to focus longer and expand the field of vision compared to non-gamers. If it means the brave men and women serving have a better chance of coming home, we're all for it. [Via GamePolitics]
DARPA working on "Silent Talk" telepathic communication for soldiers
We're no strangers to crazy DARPA projects around here, but this one especially strikes our fantastic fancy. The agency's researchers are currently undertaking a project -- called Silent Talk -- to "allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals." That's right: they're talking about telepathy. Using an EEG to read brain waves, DARPA is going to attempt to analyze "pre-speech" thoughts, then transmit them to another person. They first plan to map people's EEG patterns to his / her individual words, then see if those patterns are common to all people. If they are, then the team will move on to developing a way to transmitting those patterns to another person. Dream big, that's what we always say!
