Really Strange Findings about Brain Impulses

Look, I know I never post on this, but I read this article on the New Yorker site from Boing Boing that I found fascinating. Half the time you guys discuss political matters that I have not paid attention to or have much of an opinion on. However, I thought you all would appreciate this article on "itching." I'm curious about Arianna's take on this based on her studies in neuroscience. It's a little bit disturbing as it leads you into the discussion about nerve impulses and brain activity with a story about a woman's pathological itching.

New Yorker article on Itching

At first, I was just massively disturbed by what this woman had done to herself, but did not find it outside the realm of belief based on my experiences in mental health (although they were never quite this extreme). However, what hooked me was that one of her doctor's did not think that her experience was based on actual perception but rather within the brain, itself. I did relate to the experiences of waking up and doing something unintentional, most recently a bad cough I couldn't get rid of as well as an infestation of ants that had somehow made it into my bedroom (and unsettlingly, my bed). After a while, I did realize that it only took the stimulus of thinking about itching or coughing that would trigger the physical response. Much like the way you would suddenly perceive pain, once you had seen yourself bleeding or bruised. I think this is similar to the itch-scratch cycle that they mention in this article, where part of defeating the problem is to not realize/not think about it... making near impossible to conquer lest you had the mental discipline of a Zen master.

What really impressed me about the article was that it was not a brief discussion about how terrible a problem was, but that there are successful solutions being studied. The "mirror-box" method they discuss was fascinating in its implications for virtual reality-like technology, which they mention as well. I mean cheesy Tron imagery aside, it makes me wonder about how things like video games actually do affect the brain. I mean we've all seen Jon and Niall disappear for hours at a time doing something that I find repetitive and uninteresting, but from which they derive seemingly ceaseless gratification. I'm not making an argument against video games, but it just makes me wonder about less escapist explorations and about practical applications such as these cases.

Old 2003 Article on VG in Education

New Grant to Study Medical Applications of VG on Children with Cystic Fibrosis

When I was working with the Erikson Institute on the project on child reasoning, I kept stumbling upon articles on using video games to stimulate children's imaginations to improve reasoning abilities. It did fit into the logic behind the articles we were producing. VGs would help children look at situations from different perspectives (which we said was important in formulating different solutions/the development of reasons). They would also help them visualize a solution, which enhances learning and maintenance in memory (there were numerous studies where having subjects picture an activity before doing it would improve their performance during the activity - i.e. catching a ball). In any case, a friend recommended this TED Talk by Vilayanur Ramachandran about the human brain as another interesting article for discussion.

Anyone else find something along these lines? Do you think video games would ever have a permanent place in standard education (I'm not just talking about Oregon Trail here)? Should and will classes be taught in this manner? Or, do you think this would promote dissociative behavior as some claim about the use of Ipods?