Will Doctors Soon Be Prescribing Video Games For Mental Health?

NPR:

Developers of a new video game for your brain say theirs is more than just another get-smarter-quick scheme.

Akili, a Northern California startup, insists on taking the game through a full battery of clinical trials so it can get approval from the Food and Drug Administration — a process that will take lots of money and several years.

So why would a game designer go to all that trouble when there’s already a robust market of consumers ready to buy games that claim to make you smarter and improve your memory?

…

“That’s absurd,” says psychology professor Randall Engle from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Engle says intelligence is largely a function of neurotransmitters — the dopamine system specifically.

“We’re really talking about a biological system,” Engle says. “The idea that you can do some little computer game for half an hour a day for 10 days and change that system is ludicrous on the face of it.”

Engle is one of many skeptics who say the only thing these games make you better at is the game itself.

Read the whole story: NPR