Neda Gould at the US National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD has been experimenting with a variant video game, Duke Nukem, to detect depression in people. Apparently, as people become more depressed, their spatial memory worsens.

To test her theory, she created a game based on scenes from Duke Nukem. In it, players were to navigate through a virtual town, which they were already familiar with, and find various landmarks.

Players who weren’t depressed found an average of 3.8 locations while depressed people only found an average of 2.4 locations. And the more depressed a person was, the lower their score was.

In another interesting study last month, researchers at the University of Rochester found that people who pay action video games (specifically Unreal Tournament) for a few hours each day for a month can improve how they do on eye examinations by about 20%! Sadly, those playing Tetris didn’t see any improvement.

“Action video game play changes the way our brains process visual information,” says Daphne Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive sciences.

“These games push the human visual system to the limits and the brain adapts to it,” Bavelier adds. “That learning carries over into other activities and possibly everyday life.”