Video Games: Unseen Benefits in Medical Rehabilitation

Rehabilitating Disabilities One Level at a Time

North American society is one that exploits people’s fears. When people are afraid, there is a desire to place blame on someone or something; to project our problems on to a issue so that we feel less responsibility. Modern media has found an easy scapegoat for this in the form of video games. Being a billion dollar industry that targets young people, video games naturally became the target of many news stories promoting fear and hostility to the gaming industry. News organizations, looking to capitalize on fear, realize that fear brings viewers, and may be too hasty in their reports against gaming. Because these for-profit companies often focus on violence, crude language and the impression that this will have on the children, it is easy to forget the good things that video games have to offer. I am by no means suggesting that parents should start exposing their children to sources of entertainment that they don’t see fit consumption, but rather to a closer look at the positives that gaming and technology has brought to medical fields such as

A contraction of “exercise” and “videogame”, exergames are games that require physical movement from the player (Hernandez et al.). These games may be more common than some realize, having been around since the 1980’s. One of the world’s most popular exergames is the “Dance Dance Revolution” series by Konami. Mixing timing and fancy footwork with catchy music made this series a household name since it’s release in 1998. More recent examples include the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox Kinect, which are two of the most commonly studied exergame systems in the field of movement rehabilitation. The increased popularity and public access to these systems have caught the eye of many researches and how they can be integrated to treat conditions such as Acquired Brain Injuries and Cerebral