http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Step into a class of 30 high school students and look around. Five of them have been victims of electronic bullying in the past year. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-cyberbullying-rampant-high-school-students.html Psychology & Psychiatry Sun, 05 May 2013 06:30:01 EST news286951851 Teenagers with high blood pressure appear to have better psychological adjustment and enjoy higher quality of life than those with normal blood pressure, suggests a study in the May issue of Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-teens-high-blood-pressure-distress.html Health Fri, 03 May 2013 13:03:20 EST news286804896 Children and teens with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) use screen-based media, such as television and video games, more often than their typically developing peers and are more likely to develop problematic video game habits, a University of Missouri researcher found. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-children-teens-autism-preoccupied-video.html Autism spectrum disorders Wed, 17 Apr 2013 12:51:26 EST news285421866 (HealthDay)—It's not how much time teens spend watching TV but how intensely they watch that adds on the pounds, new research suggests. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-teens-focus-tv-obesity.html Overweight and Obesity Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:50:01 EST news284631717 Playing video games for an hour each day can improve subsequent performance on cognitive tasks that use similar mental processes to those involved in the game, according to research published March 13 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Adam Chie-Ming Oei and Michael Donald Patterson of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-video-game-hour-day-cognitive.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:28:23 EST news282414496 Much to the chagrin of parents who think their kids should spend less time playing video games and more time studying, time spent playing action video games can actually make dyslexic children read better. In fact, 12 hours of video game play did more for reading skills than is normally achieved with a year of spontaneous reading development or demanding traditional reading treatments. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-action-video-games-boost-skills.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:31:04 EST news281277053 Neuroscientists should help to develop compelling digital games that boost brain function and improve well-being, say two professors specializing in the field in a commentary article published in the science journal Nature. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-scientists-urge-game-brain.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:56:34 EST news281210187 Laparoscopic surgeons may improve certain aspects of surgical performance by regularly playing on a Nintendo Wii, according to research published February 27 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Gregorio Patrizi and colleagues from the University of Rome, Italy. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-wii-playing-surgeons-laparoscopic-procedures.html Surgery Wed, 27 Feb 2013 17:00:02 EST news281206205 (Medical Xpress)—Children could be better off playing video games this holiday season than watching television, a QUT study shows. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-video-games-benefit-children.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 16 Jan 2013 09:16:31 EST news277550185 (HealthDay)—Every Christmas, Linda Russell knows her three children's wish lists will be chock-full of requests for the latest in electronic toys and gadgets. And, like most parents, she struggles to know when to give in and get the requested new computer or when to say no to the latest video game. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-family-grapples-kids-tech.html Pediatrics Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:11:17 EST news274702270 (Medical Xpress)—A new study provides the first experimental evidence that the negative effects of playing violent video games can accumulate over time. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-violent-video-games-equals-aggression.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:49:31 EST news274355351 A psychology researcher from Canberra has collected some of the first scientific evidence that video gaming can be addictive in a way similar to gambling and alcohol. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-video-gaming-addiction-thoughts.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 26 Nov 2012 07:06:24 EST news273135972 New research, launched today and funded by the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (CARDI), shows that playing video games can help older people improve their balance and make them less likely to fall. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-specially-wii-games-falls.html Health Wed, 10 Oct 2012 09:07:19 EST news269078828 Teens who play mature-rated, risk-glorifying video games may be more likely than those who don't to become reckless drivers who experience increases in automobile accidents, police stops and willingness to drink and drive, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-risk-glorifying-video-games-teens-recklessly.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 11 Sep 2012 11:47:57 EST news266582865 (HealthDay) -- Teens who engaged in more moderate-to-vigorous outdoor activity reported better health and social functioning than their peers who spent hours in front of television and computer screens, a new study in Australia has found. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-outdoor-teens-happier.html Pediatrics Fri, 22 Jun 2012 10:10:01 EST news259577462 A team led by psychology professor Ian Spence at the University of Toronto reveals that playing an action videogame, even for a relatively short time, causes differences in brain activity and improvements in visual attention. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-action-videogames-brains.html Neuroscience Thu, 26 Apr 2012 11:52:07 EST news254659918 Impulsive children with attention problems tend to play more video games, while kids in general who spend lots of time video gaming may also develop impulsivity and attention difficulties, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-impulsive-kids-video-games.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 23 Feb 2012 10:28:50 EST news249215324 (Medical Xpress) -- Douglas Gentile says his own research has found both positive and negative effects from playing video games. And the Iowa State University associate professor of psychology cites examples of both in a new article he coauthored in the December issue of Nature Reviews/Neuroscience. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-gentile-cites-positive-negative-effects.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 28 Dec 2011 04:58:12 EST news244270680 Fourteen-year-olds who were frequent video gamers had more gray matter in the rewards center of the brain than peers who didn't play video games as much - suggesting that gaming may be correlated to changes in the brain, much as addictions are. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-frequent-gamers-brain-differences.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 15 Nov 2011 16:49:03 EST news240598129 About 14 percent of Philadelphia's high school students are considered overweight, and while a myriad of research has been published on what schools, communities and parents can do to help curb these rates, very little information exists on what the teens themselves are doing to lose weight. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-overweight-teens-weight-wrong.html Overweight and Obesity Tue, 01 Nov 2011 04:27:50 EST news239340425 A new study conducted in an eye clinic in India found that correction of amblyopia, also called "lazy eye," can be achieved in many older children, if they stick to a regimen that includes playing video games along with standard amblyopia treatment. Today at the 115th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, Dr. Somen Ghosh will report on the approaches that allowed about a third of his study participants, who were between 10 and 18 years old, to make significant vision gains. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-video-games-treatment-lazy-eye.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Sun, 23 Oct 2011 11:10:26 EST news238586996 (Medical Xpress) -- Here are some words that few would have thought to put together: video game therapy. Yet, a pilot study by vision researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, has found that playing video games can help improve the vision of adults with amblyopia, or lazy eye. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-video-games-adults-lazy-eye.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:21:29 EST news234087672 The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that almost 18% of US teens are obese. Although most experts agree that our growing obesity "epidemic" is driven by both inadequate physical activity and excessive caloric intake, implementing solutions is extraordinarily difficult. One area that has caught the attention of health researchers is the observation that trends in video game playing parallel obesity rates on a population basis. Furthermore, several studies have documented a positive association between how much time a child plays video games and his or her chance of being obese. However, correlation does not necessarily imply causality, and controlled intervention studies are required to test whether playing video games causes children to increase their food intake and/or decrease their energy expenditure. In the first such study of this kind, Canadian and Danish researchers tested their hypothesis that video game playing is accompanied by increased spontaneous food intake. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-rigorous-video-game-food-intake.html Health Tue, 17 May 2011 14:34:27 EST news224861643 Douglas Gentile is painfully aware of how research on the effects of video games on kids is often oversimplified to say that games are either "good" or "bad." The associate professor of psychology at Iowa State University has had his own research typecast on the "bad" side with studies on violent video game's effects and video game addiction, even though he's also done studies demonstrating the benefits of games. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-multiple-dimensions-video-game-effects.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 10 May 2011 09:24:30 EST news224238253 Six-year-olds who spent the most time watching television, using a computer or playing video games had narrower arteries in the back of their eyes — a marker of future cardiovascular risk, in a first-of-its-kind study reported in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology: Journal of the American Heart Association. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-kids-screen-linked-early-markers.html Health Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:34:02 EST news222536027