Playing 3-D video games can boost memory formation

UCI professor of neurobiology & behavior Craig Stark, here holding a 3-D-printed model of his own hippocampus, says that "video games may be a nice, viable route" to maintaining cognitive health

Don't put that controller down just yet. Playing three-dimensional video games -- besides being lots of fun -- can boost the formation of memories, according to University of California, Irvine neurobiologists.

Along with adding to the trove of research that shows these games can improve eye-hand coordination and reaction time, this finding shows the potential for novel virtual approaches to helping people who lose memory as they age or suffer from dementia. Study results appear Dec. 9 in The Journal of Neuroscience.

For their research, Craig Stark and Dane Clemenson of UCI's Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory recruited non-gamer college students to play either a video game with a passive, two-dimensional environment ("Angry Birds") or one with an intricate, 3-D setting ("Super Mario 3D World") for 30 minutes per day over two weeks.

Before and after the two-week period, the students took memory tests that engaged the brain's hippocampus, the region associated with complex learning and memory. They were given a series of pictures of everyday objects to study. Then they were shown images of the same objects, new ones and others that differed slightly from the original items and asked to categorize them. Recognition of the slightly altered images requires the hippocampus, Stark said, and his earlier research had demonstrated that the ability to do this clearly declines with age. This is a large part of why it's so difficult to learn new names or remember where you put your keys as you get older.

Students playing the 3-D video game improved their scores on the memory test, while the 2-D gamers did not. The boost was not small either. Memory performance increased by about 12 percent, the same amount it normally decreases between the ages of 45 and 70.

In previous studies on rodents, postdoctoral scholar Clemenson and others showed that exploring the environment resulted in the growth of new neurons that became entrenched in the hippocampus' memory circuit and increased neuronal signaling networks. Stark noted some commonalities between the 3-D game the humans played and the environment the rodents explored -- qualities lacking in the 2-D game.

"First, the 3-D games have a few things the 2-D ones do not," he said. "They've got a lot more spatial information in there to explore. Second, they're much more complex, with a lot more information to learn. Either way, we know this kind of learning and memory not only stimulates but requires the hippocampus."

Stark added that it's unclear whether the overall amount of information and complexity in the 3-D game or the spatial relationships and exploration is stimulating the hippocampus. "This is one question we're following up on," he said.

Unlike typical brain training programs, the professor of neurobiology & behavior pointed out, video games are not created with specific cognitive processes in mind but rather are designed to immerse users in the characters and adventure. They draw on many cognitive processes, including visual, spatial, emotional, motivational, attentional, critical thinking, problem-solving and working memory.

"It's quite possible that by explicitly avoiding a narrow focus on a single ... cognitive domain and by more closely paralleling natural experience, immersive video games may be better suited to provide enriching experiences that translate into functional gains," Stark said.

The next step for him and his colleagues is to determine if environmental enrichment -- either through 3-D video games or real-world exploration experiences -- can reverse the hippocampal-dependent cognitive deficits present in older populations. This effort is funded by a $300,000 Dana Foundation grant.

"Can we use this video game approach to help improve hippocampus functioning?" Stark asked. "It's often suggested that an active, engaged lifestyle can be a real factor in stemming cognitive aging. While we can't all travel the world on vacation, we can do many other things to keep us cognitively engaged and active. Video games may be a nice, viable route."

A video about the research can be found here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1YfgMVhhdA&feature=youtu.be

Reference: Journal of Neuroscience, Dec 9, 2015, in press: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2580-15.2015

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Irvine. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

3-D view of Greenland Ice Sheet opens window on ice history

This is a cross-section of the age of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Layers determined to be from the Holocene period, formed during the past 11,700 years, are shown in green. Layers accumulated during the last ice age, from 11,700 to 115,000 years ago, are shown in blue. Layers from the Eemian period, more than 115,000 years old, are shown in red. Regions of unknown age are gray

Scientists using ice-penetrating radar data collected by NASA's Operation IceBridge and earlier airborne campaigns have built the first comprehensive map of layers deep inside the Greenland Ice Sheet, opening a window on past climate conditions and the ice sheet's potentially perilous future.

This new map allows scientists to determine the age of large swaths of the second largest mass of ice on Earth, an area containing enough water to raise ocean levels by about 20 feet.
"This new, huge data volume records how the ice sheet evolved and how it's flowing today," said Joe MacGregor, the study's lead author, a glaciologist at The University of Texas at Austin Institute for Geophysics (UTIG), a unit of the Jackson School of Geosciences.
Greenland's ice sheet has been losing mass during the past two decades, a phenomenon accelerated by warming temperatures. Scientists are studying ice from different climate periods in the past to better understand how the ice sheet might respond in the future.
Ice cores offer one way of studying the distant past. These cylinders of ice drilled from the ice sheet hold evidence of past snow accumulation and temperature and contain impurities such as dust and volcanic ash compacted over hundreds of thousands of years. These layers are visible in ice cores and can be detected with ice-penetrating radar.
Ice-penetrating radar works by sending radar signals into the ice and recording the strength and return time of reflected signals. From those signals, scientists can detect the ice surface, sub-ice bedrock and layers within the ice.
New techniques used in this study allowed scientists to efficiently pick out these layers in radar data. Prior studies had mapped internal layers, but not at the scale made possible by these newer, faster methods.
Another major factor in this study was the scope of Operation IceBridge's measurements across Greenland, which included flights that covered distances of tens of thousands of kilometers across the ice sheet.
"IceBridge surveyed previously unexplored parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet and did it using state-of-the-art CReSIS radars," said study co-author Mark Fahnestock, an IceBridge science team member and glaciologist from the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF-GI).
CReSIS is the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, a National Science Foundation science and technology center headquartered at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.
IceBridge's flight lines often intersect ice core sites where other scientists have analyzed the ice's chemical composition to map and date layers in the ice. These core data provide a reference for radar measurements and provide a way to calculate how much ice from a given climate period exists across the ice sheet, something known as an age volume. Scientists are interested in knowing more about ice from the Eemian period, a time from 115,000 to 130,000 years ago that was about as warm as today. This new age volume provides the first data-driven estimate of where Eemian ice may remain.
Comparing this age volume to simple computer models helped the study's team better understand the ice sheet's history. Differences in the mapped and modeled age volumes point to past changes in ice flow or processes such as melting at the ice sheet's base. This information will be helpful for evaluating the more sophisticated ice sheet models that are crucial for projecting Greenland's future contribution to sea-level rise.
"Prior to this study, a good ice-sheet model was one that got its present thickness and surface speed right. Now, they'll also be able to work on getting its history right, which is important because ice sheets have very long memories," said MacGregor.

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The above story is based on materials provided by University of Texas at Austin. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Joseph A. MacGregor, Mark A. Fahnestock, Ginny A. Catania, John D. Paden, S. Prasad Gogineni, S. Keith Young, Susan C. Rybarski, Alexandria N. Mabrey, Benjamin M. Wagman, Mathieu Morlighem. Radiostratigraphy and age structure of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 2015; DOI: 10.1002/2014JF003215

Huge 3-D displays without 3-D glasses

Billboards of the future could show astonishing 3D effects, thanks to a new technology developed in Austria

A new invention opens the door to a new generation of outdoor displays. Different pictures can be seen at different angles, creating 3D effects without the need for 3D glasses.

Public screenings have become an important part of major sports events. In the future, we will be able to enjoy them in 3D, thanks to a new invention from Austrian scientists. A sophisticated laser system sends laser beams into different directions. Therefore, different pictures are visible from different angles. The angular resolution is so fine that the left eye is presented a different picture than the right one, creating a 3D effect.
In 2013, the young start-up company TriLite Technologies had the idea to develop this new kind of display, which sends beams of light directly to the viewers' eyes. The highly interdisciplinary project was carried out together with the Vienna University of Technology.
Together, TriLite and TU Vienna have created the first prototype. Currently it only has a modest resolution of five pixels by three, but it clearly shows that the system works. "We are creating a second prototype, which will display colour pictures with a higher resolution. But the crucial point is that the individual laser pixels work. Scaling it up to a display with many pixels is not a problem," says Jörg Reitterer (TriLite Technologies and PhD-student in the team of Professor Ulrich Schmid at the Vienna University of Technology).
Every single 3D-Pixel (also called "Trixel") consists of lasers and a moveable mirror. "The mirror directs the laser beams across the field of vision, from left to right. During that movement the laser intensity is modulated so that different laser flashes are sent into different directions," says Ulrich Schmid. To experience the 3D effect, the viewer must be positioned in a certain distance range from the screen. If the distance is too large, both eyes receive the same image and only a normal 2D picture can be seen. The range in which the 3D effect can be experienced can be tuned according to the local requirements.
Hundreds of Images at Once
3D movies in the cinema only show two different pictures -- one for each eye. The newly developed display, however, can present hundreds of pictures. Walking by the display, one can get a view of the displayed object from different sides, just like passing a real object. For this, however, a new video format is required, which has already been developed by the researchers. "Today's 3D cinema movies can be converted into our 3D format, but we expect that new footage will be created especially for our displays -- perhaps with a much larger number of cameras," says Franz Fiedler, CTO of TriLite Technologies.
Compared to a movie screen, the display is very vivid. Therefore it can be used outdoors, even in bright sunlight. This is not only interesting for 3D-presentations but also for targeted advertisements. Electronic Billboards could display different ads, seen from different angles. "Maybe someone wants to appeal specifically to the customers leaving the shop across the street, and a different ad is shown to the people waiting at the bus stop," says Ferdinand Saint-Julien, CEO of TriLite Technologies. Technologically, this would not be a problem.
Entering the market
"We are very happy that the project was so successful in such a short period of time," says Ulrich Schmid. It took only three years to get from the first designs to a working prototype. The technology has now been patented and presented in several scientific publications. The second prototype should be finished by the middle of the year, the commercial launch is scheduled for 2016.

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Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Vienna University of Technology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jörg Reitterer, Franz Fidler, Gerhard Schmid, Thomas Riel, Christian Hambeck, Ferdinand Saint Julien-Wallsee, Walter Leeb, Ulrich Schmid. Design and evaluation of a large-scale autostereoscopic multi-view laser display for outdoor applications. Optics Express, 2014; 22 (22): 27063 DOI: 10.1364/OE.22.027063