VR Game Ties Depression To Brain Area

An anonymous reader writes "Science Daily is reporting that scientists are using a VR videogame that challenges spatial memory as a new tool to map out depression in the brain. 'Spatial memory' is how you orient yourself in space and remember how to get to places in the outside world. Researchers have found that depressed people performed poorly on the video game compared, suggesting that their hippocampi (where spatial memory is based) were not working properly."

Here's the abstract

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual research was published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Here's the abstract:

OBJECTIVE: Findings on spatial memory in depression have been inconsistent. A navigation task based on virtual reality may provide a more sensitive and consistent measure of the hippocampal-related spatial memory deficits associated with depression. METHOD: Performance on a novel virtual reality navigation task and a traditional measure of spatial memory was assessed in 30 depressed patients (unipolar and bipolar) and 19 normal comparison subjects. RESULTS: Depressed patients performed significantly worse than comparison subjects on the virtual reality task, as assessed by the number of locations found in the virtual town. Between-group differences were not detected on the traditional measure. The navigation task showed high test-retest reliability. CONCLUSIONS: Depressed patients performed worse than healthy subjects on a novel spatial memory task. Virtual reality navigation may provide a consistent, sensitive measure of cognitive deficits in patients with affective disorders, representing a mechanism to study a putative endophenotype for hippocampal function.

Clueless = Post on Slashdot

[spun]

Can't even be bothered to read the summary, eh? The research used a video game to find out that depressed people are bad at spatial memory. It did not show that playing video games cures depression.

Hippocampus & Depression

[spectecjr]

The hippocampus doesn't only handle spatial memory... it's also the store for contextual memory. (It takes longer to develop than the amygdyla, which is why most people don't remember much of their early childhood years). Given that most depression / psychological problems that aren't hardware in nature appear to be due to a mismatch between contextual memory and the limbic brain's emotional memory that the brain needs to learn to resolve, maybe this isn't much of a surprise.

Although it might explain why eye movement can be used in therapy to reprogram people's responses to trauma.

Re:Anecdotal Evidence to the contrary.

[cmarkn]

I used to be despressed[sic] all the time

Perhaps you were wasted all the time, but you know nothing about depression. Depression is a disease, not a choice. Do you tell people with diabetes "just forget all about yourself for a while"? No, you tell them to watch what they eat and take their medicine. That is the same thing you should tell people with depression. It is ignorant blather like this that makes depressed people turn suicidal.

So pretend you have your shit together, as you claim, and only offer your opinions on matters you actually know something about. That way, you won't be killing people with your ignorance.