[Music]
could a videogame end ADHD the answer is
yes and today I’m gonna tell you how we
might get there let’s start with some
background ADHD stands for attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder it
affects about 10% of all children and 5%
of adults and it actually is defined as
the presence of inattention impulsivity
and hyperactivity so if we’re going to
end
ADHD what we really need to do is
improve your ability to pay attention
improve your impulse control and improve
your ability to keep calm and relaxed
and the question becomes how do we
improve these skills and the answer is
simple we improve these skills the same
way we improve any other skill through
practice so how do we practice paying
attention how do we practice controlling
our impulses and how do we practice
keeping calm and relaxed that’s where
video games come in so let’s start with
attention if I’m going to practice and
improve my ability to pay attention well
first I need to know when I’m paying
attention that’s not always intuitive on
a moment-to-moment basis especially for
children but with an EEG headset I can
actually measure your brain activity and
I can see when you’re focused and when
you’re distracted and I can feed that
information into a video game so that if
you’re focused and you’re paying
attention this meter will fill up and
your green dragon will fly faster and
faster and if you lose focus and if you
get distracted the dragon will slow down
and you’ll lose through this mechanism
kids can practice paying attention and
improve in a fun and engaging way
so paying attention is a start the kids
with ADHD also suffer from impulsivity
engaging in behavior that seems
rewarding but is not in our long-term
best interests so how do we practice
impulse control
we can’t very well put a bunch of
temptations in front of a child and tell
them to sit still and practice resisting
but we can do just that in a video game
in this game you get to do something
really cool you get to tap the screen
breathe fire and destroy these monsters
that fly at you which is a lot of fun
but the game gives you a set of
instructions saying only certain kinds
of monsters can be destroyed and others
like this green one have to be ignored
you have to control your impulse to tap
the screen and breathe fire and blow up
all these monsters and you have to do
that over and over and over again
controlling all those impulses and by
practicing that impulse control over and
over again you actually rewire your
brain and you’re able to improve your
impulse control in your daily life
finally we have hyperactivity which is
present and some but not all cases of
ADHD how do we practice keeping calm and
relaxed well that same headset that’s
used to measure your brain activity can
also measure your body movement and your
muscle tension and again can feed that
information into a video game so that
the more calm I am the more relaxed and
still I sit the better I do in the game
and if I tense up or if I move around
too much then I lose points I’m
penalized so through these three game
mechanics kids can practice paying
attention practice controlling their
impulses and practice keeping calm in a
way that’s fun and engaging and improve
as a result now this all sounds good but
you might be wondering does it actually
work and happy to say that the results
are in and the answer seems to be that
yes it does and we know this because we
conducted a ran
is controlled clinical study with a
researcher at Duke University and in
that study what we did is we took sixty
children with ADHD and we randomized
them into two groups one group used a
video game intervention like you just
saw for ten weeks three times a week 30
minutes each session the other group of
kids continued their normal ADHD
treatments in most cases that was
medications like adderall and Ritalin
some cases it was therapy and at the end
of the 10 weeks we looked at their
improvements on a variety of ADHD
assessments we looked at how parents
said their children performed at school
and at home and a variety of rating
scales and we looked objectively at
children’s performance on tasks designed
to measure their ability to pay
attention and have self-control the
results from this study were staggering
we found that kids using the video game
intervention improved almost four times
as much as kids using traditional
treatments and in many cases after only
10 weeks kids using the video game no
longer met the symptom criteria for ADHD
this technology is available today and
this is just the beginning there’s more
research to be done but we’ve unlocked a
powerful tool for improving ADHD
symptoms and children and this doesn’t
stop at ADHD this technology has
applications for training a wide range
of cognitive abilities and we may all
soon be using video games to train our
brain so today i’ve told you about how
kids were able to use video games in the
concept of practice to improve their
ADHD symptoms and i think was really
amazing as these kids were able to
change something about themselves that
they thought was unchangeable that they
were told was fixed and while the
technology surely helped it was these
kids own efforts that led to these
improvements so what about you all I’m
sure that your whole life you’ve been
told or you’ve been led to believe
that certain aspects of your brain or
your personality are fixed that that’s
just who you are our research shows that
that’s just not the case
that with the right amount of practice
the right amount of effort and maybe
even the help of a video game you could
do what these kids did you could change
thank you
[Music]
could a videogame end ADHD the answer is
yes and today I’m gonna tell you how we
might get there let’s start with some
background ADHD stands for attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder it
affects about 10% of all children and 5%
of adults and it actually is defined as
the presence of inattention impulsivity
and hyperactivity so if we’re going to
end
ADHD what we really need to do is
improve your ability to pay attention
improve your impulse control and improve
your ability to keep calm and relaxed
and the question becomes how do we
improve these skills and the answer is
simple we improve these skills the same
way we improve any other skill through
practice so how do we practice paying
attention how do we practice controlling
our impulses and how do we practice
keeping calm and relaxed that’s where
video games come in so let’s start with
attention if I’m going to practice and
improve my ability to pay attention well
first I need to know when I’m paying
attention that’s not always intuitive on
a moment-to-moment basis especially for
children but with an EEG headset I can
actually measure your brain activity and
I can see when you’re focused and when
you’re distracted and I can feed that
information into a video game so that if
you’re focused and you’re paying
attention this meter will fill up and
your green dragon will fly faster and
faster and if you lose focus and if you
get distracted the dragon will slow down
and you’ll lose through this mechanism
kids can practice paying attention and
improve in a fun and engaging way
so paying attention is a start the kids
with ADHD also suffer from impulsivity
engaging in behavior that seems
rewarding but is not in our long-term
best interests so how do we practice
impulse control
we can’t very well put a bunch of
temptations in front of a child and tell
them to sit still and practice resisting
but we can do just that in a video game
in this game you get to do something
really cool you get to tap the screen
breathe fire and destroy these monsters
that fly at you which is a lot of fun
but the game gives you a set of
instructions saying only certain kinds
of monsters can be destroyed and others
like this green one have to be ignored
you have to control your impulse to tap
the screen and breathe fire and blow up
all these monsters and you have to do
that over and over and over again
controlling all those impulses and by
practicing that impulse control over and
over again you actually rewire your
brain and you’re able to improve your
impulse control in your daily life
finally we have hyperactivity which is
present and some but not all cases of
ADHD how do we practice keeping calm and
relaxed well that same headset that’s
used to measure your brain activity can
also measure your body movement and your
muscle tension and again can feed that
information into a video game so that
the more calm I am the more relaxed and
still I sit the better I do in the game
and if I tense up or if I move around
too much then I lose points I’m
penalized so through these three game
mechanics kids can practice paying
attention practice controlling their
impulses and practice keeping calm in a
way that’s fun and engaging and improve
as a result now this all sounds good but
you might be wondering does it actually
work and happy to say that the results
are in and the answer seems to be that
yes it does and we know this because we
conducted a ran
is controlled clinical study with a
researcher at Duke University and in
that study what we did is we took sixty
children with ADHD and we randomized
them into two groups one group used a
video game intervention like you just
saw for ten weeks three times a week 30
minutes each session the other group of
kids continued their normal ADHD
treatments in most cases that was
medications like adderall and Ritalin
some cases it was therapy and at the end
of the 10 weeks we looked at their
improvements on a variety of ADHD
assessments we looked at how parents
said their children performed at school
and at home and a variety of rating
scales and we looked objectively at
children’s performance on tasks designed
to measure their ability to pay
attention and have self-control the
results from this study were staggering
we found that kids using the video game
intervention improved almost four times
as much as kids using traditional
treatments and in many cases after only
10 weeks kids using the video game no
longer met the symptom criteria for ADHD
this technology is available today and
this is just the beginning there’s more
research to be done but we’ve unlocked a
powerful tool for improving ADHD
symptoms and children and this doesn’t
stop at ADHD this technology has
applications for training a wide range
of cognitive abilities and we may all
soon be using video games to train our
brain so today i’ve told you about how
kids were able to use video games in the
concept of practice to improve their
ADHD symptoms and i think was really
amazing as these kids were able to
change something about themselves that
they thought was unchangeable that they
were told was fixed and while the
technology surely helped it was these
kids own efforts that led to these
improvements so what about you all I’m
sure that your whole life you’ve been
told or you’ve been led to believe
that certain aspects of your brain or
your personality are fixed that that’s
just who you are our research shows that
that’s just not the case
that with the right amount of practice
the right amount of effort and maybe
even the help of a video game you could
do what these kids did you could change
thank you
[Music]
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