@Shanarah: I think a creative outlet can be great for most people, whether its drawing or painting/coloring or writing or music or even the arts and crafts stuff, like knitting or scrapbooking.

@airshocker: if you say so.

You'll also be a heavy weapons expert, qualified to operate the most destructive arsenal we have. Carpe diem !

hell yeah. Our chamber pots are much sturdier.

thought this was kind of interesting.

One of the benefits of playing action games may be an enhanced ability to precisely learn the dynamics of new sensorimotor tasks. Such skills are key, for example, in laparoscopic surgery which involves high precision manual control of remote surgery tools through a computer interface.

A university of Toronto study finds that action video games bolster sensorimotor skills

A study led by University of Toronto psychology researchers has found that people who play action video games such as Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed seem to learn a new sensorimotor skill more quickly than non-gamers do.

A new sensorimotor skill, such as learning to ride a bike or typing, often requires a new pattern of coordination between vision and motor movement. With such skills, an individual generally moves from novice performance, characterized by a low degree of coordination, to expert performance, marked by a high degree of coordination. As a result of successful sensorimotor learning, one comes to perform these tasks efficiently and perhaps even without consciously thinking about them.

"We wanted to understand if chronic video game playing has an effect on sensorimotor control, that is, the coordinated function of vision and hand movement," said graduate student Davood Gozli, who led the study with supervisor Jay Pratt.

To find out, they set up two experiments. In the first, 18 gamers (those who played a first-person shooter game at least three times per week for at least two hours each time in the previous six months) and 18 non-gamers (who had little or no video game use in the past two years) performed a manual tracking task. Using a computer mouse, they were instructed to keep a small green square cursor at the centre of a white square moving target which moved in a very complicated pattern that repeated itself. The task probes sensorimotor control, because participants see the target movement and try to coordinate their hand movements with what they see.

In the early stages of doing the tasks, the gamers' performance was not significantly better than non-gamers. "This suggests that while chronically playing action video games requires constant motor control, playing these games does not give gamers a reliable initial advantage in new and unfamiliar sensorimotor tasks," said Gozli.

By the end of the experiment, all participants performed better as they learned the complex pattern of the target. The gamers, however, were significantly more accurate in following the repetitive motion than the non-gamers. "This is likely due to the gamers' superior ability in learning a novel sensorimotor pattern, that is, their gaming experience enabled them to learn better than the non-gamers."

In the next experiment, the researchers wanted to test whether the superior performance of the gamers was indeed a result of learning rather than simply having better sensorimotor control. To eliminate the learning component of the experiment, they required participants to again track a moving dot, but in this case the patterns of motion changed throughout the experiment. The result this time: neither the gamers nor the non-gamers improved as time went by, confirming that learning was playing a key role and the gamers were learning better.

One of the benefits of playing action games may be an enhanced ability to precisely learn the dynamics of new sensorimotor tasks. Such skills are key, for example, in laparoscopic surgery which involves high precision manual control of remote surgery tools through a computer interface.

Original Article

Who wants to get out their box of crayons and go to town??

"Coloring is an activity that we tend to associate with children. As we grow older, we put aside our crayons and colored pencils in favor of more respectable writing utensils like pens and highlighters. However, it turns out coloring can be beneficial for adults -- namely for its de-stressing power.

The practice generates wellness, quietness and also stimulates brain areas related to motor skills, the senses and creativity. In fact, publishers have lately been launching coloring books specifically for adults. The trend is alive and well in countries in Europe and North America. Most recently, in Spain, the publication Espasa published Coloréitor, with illustrations by well-known cartoonist Forges.

One of the first psychologists to apply coloring as a relaxation technique was Carl G. Jüng in the early 20th century. He did this through mandalas: circular designs with concentric shapes similar to the Gothic churches’ rose windows. They have their origin in India.

When coloring, we activate different areas of our two cerebral hemispheres, says psychologist Gloria Martínez Ayala. "The action involves both logic, by which we color forms, and creativity, when mixing and matching colors. This incorporates the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in vision and fine motor skills [coordination necessary to make small, precise movements]. The relaxation that it provides lowers the activity of the amygdala, a basic part of our brain involved in controlling emotion that is affected by stress."

In simplest terms, coloring has a de-stressing effect because when we focus on a particular activity, we focus on it and not on our worries. But it also "brings out our imagination and takes us back to our childhood, a period in which we most certainly had a lot less stress." This leads us immediately and unconsciously to welfare, exposes the specialist.

"I recommend it as a relaxation technique," says psychologist Antoni Martínez. "We can use it to enter into a more creative, freer state," he assures. We can also use it to connect with how we feel, since depending on our mood we choose different colors or intensity. "I myself have practiced that. I recommend it in a quiet environment, even with chill music. Let the color and the lines flow."

In countries like France or the UK, coloring books for adults are bestsellers. The French publisher Hachette even has a collection called Art-Thérapie with twenty de-stress volumes including all kinds of drawings from books of butterflies and flowers to cupcakes, graffiti and psychedelic patterns. There's also the book Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book (M & E Books) that has snuck into top selling lists.

In the United Kingdom the books of illustrator Mel Simone Elliot are popular. She lets you color celebrities like Ryan Gosling, Lady Gaga, Beyonce and Kate Moss in her series Colour Me Good. And we can't forget the aptly named Coloring for Grown-Ups, released by comedians Ryan Hunter and Taige Jensen in the U.S.

The trend has struck Spain too. The Spanish cartoonist Antonio Fraguas, or Forges, published Coloréitor, "a de-stress book," its publishing house proclaims. The psychologist Luis Rojas Marcos says in the preface that "coloring comforts us, gives us peace, and lets us enjoy ourselves -- it even temporarily frees us from daily pressures... Although coloring a couple of hours does not eliminate all problems and worries, it takes us away and relieves us from the stress that overwhelms us."

If you've yet to try coloring as a relaxation technique, Forges has dedicated the drawing above to readers of The Huffington Post. He gave this tip for beginners: "Despite how highly stressed you may be, the most important thing is to not use pen markers with alcohol that go through the paper. The proper thing is to use crayons."

You heard it here first."

Original Article

Welcome !

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YOU GUYS NEED TO SET YOUR DVR.

Just do the Seinfeld thing and be THERE for her.