Excessive computer gaming has the hallmarks of addiction, suggests new experiments on "drug memory". The researchers argue it should be classified as such, enabling “addicts” to start seeking help.
“We have the patients and we have the parents and family members calling us for help,” says Sabine Grüsser of the Charité University Medicine Berlin, in Germany.
Learning is recognised as an important underlying mechanism of addiction. In becoming addicted, people start to associate cues that are normally neutral with the object of their craving. To a crack addict, for instance, a building in which they have used the drug is more than just a place they have been – it becomes a trigger for craving and can, on its own, reignite a need to use the drug again after months of abstinence.
Grüsser and her colleague Ralf Thalemann wanted to see if computer game cues could also trigger similar “drug memories” in excessive computer gamers.
Desperate to indulge
They compared 15 men in their 20s who admitted that gaming had chased other activities – such as work and socialising – out of their lives, and 15 game-playing but otherwise healthy controls.
They showed them a variety of visual cues and asked the volunteers to rate how they felt about the images. All had normal reactions to neutral images, such as chairs, and even to alcohol-related images, despite the fact that all the participants drank alcohol.
But excessive computer game players showed classic signs of craving when they were presented with freeze-frames from some of their favourite games – they desperately wanted to play, expected to feel better once they did, and fully intended to indulge again as soon as possible.
Startle reflex
In another test, the researchers monitored the response of a large muscle in the eye, to see how much the volunteers could be startled while looking at a game-related image. Scientists theorise that the most pleasing stimuli prompts the smallest of startle reflexes. They found that excessive game players could not be easily startled, unlike the controls.
Grüsser says that addictions stem from relying too heavily on one coping strategy, which eventually becomes the only activity that can activate the dopamine system and bring a person relief. “It’s the same mechanism in all addicts,” she says.
Maressa Hecht Orzack, who founded a computer addiction service at McLean Hospital in Boston, US, agrees that the condition has a lot in common with other addictions. What makes it tougher is that gamers cannot simply abstain from using computers – they are now an integral part of our lives. In that sense, it has to be approached in the same way as an eating disorder, she suggests.
"Computer games have a reinforcing quality, for sure," agrees John Westland, a social worker at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. "I don't think the comparison [to a drug of abuse] is a bad one," he says.
And while not everyone agrees that computer games have the addictive potential of drugs, or even gambling, groups such as Online Gamers Anonymous and EverQuest Widows are overflowing with stories of people so wrapped up in slaying monsters that for days they neglect to eat, wash or sleep.
The research was presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting, in Washington DC, US.
source:http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8327&print=true
# posted by dark master : 11/17/2005 10:05:00 AM
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DALLAS, Nov. 15 (AP) - Two kidney dialysis patients from Argentina have received the world's first blood vessels grown in a laboratory dish from snippets of their own skin, a technique that doctors hope will someday offer a new source of arteries and veins for diabetics and other patients.
Scientists from Cytograft Tissue Engineering Inc., a small biotechnology company in Novato, Calif., reported the tissue-engineering advance on Tuesday at the annual conference of the American Heart Association here.
Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which has spent $2.5 million to finance the company's work, called the new method "extraordinarily promising."
Because it uses the patient's own tissue, the technique steers clears of the political and ethical debate surrounding embryonic stem cells.
Like many patients in dialysis, the two Argentines, a 56-year-old woman and a 61-year-old man, were faced with the prospect of running out of healthy blood vessels. To grow new ones, doctors took a small piece of skin and a vein from the back of the hand, and nurtured them in a laboratory dish with growth enhancers to help produce substances like collagen and elastin, which give tissues their shape and texture.
The process produced two types of tissue: one that forms the tough structure or backbone of the vessel and one that lines it and helps it to function.
The feel of the new tissue "was very similar to the other vessels" that were present from birth, said Dr. Sergio Garrido, the surgeon who implanted it in the two patients.
The woman's new vessel has withstood needle punctures three times a week for six months and the man's for almost three months.
In the future, doctors hope the homegrown vessels will prevent amputations in diabetics who suffer from poor circulation, and give heart-bypass patients new veins or arteries to detour around blocked vessels. The method may also hold promise for children born with defective blood vessels.
source:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/science/16veins.html?ei=5089&en=6e7c74d95157196d&ex=1289797200&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
# posted by dark master : 11/17/2005 10:04:00 AM
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"Recently I've been promoted to what essentially amounts to a project lead role for every project we do, in house. Since my company has run for the past 35+ years with no form of central IT department, there has been no standards put into place for developers to abide by. One of my tasks is to set up standards in how projects will be implemented and produced. Right now I'm more concerned about trying to set up coding standards, so that any developer can jump into any part of a project and be able to figure out what's going on, without wasting a couple hours just to figure out the code. I've come across some documents in this area from a few sources (of course can't remember them off the top of my head). What practices/standards do you use in your workplace?"
source:http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/16/2223222&tid=156&tid=4
# posted by dark master : 11/17/2005 10:03:00 AM
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