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Saturday 2 August 2014

Mobile phone app sheds new light on risk taking behaviour

Rock climber
Scientists found that four puzzles in The Great Brain Experiment app can measure several different aspects of cognitive function.
Other games test our visual perception and our ability to remember things.
Scientists hope that results from thousands of participants will help them address population differences.
The research has been published in the journal Plos One.
By playing games participants can compare themselves to the other players while sending data back to the scientists.
"Each of these games is a serious scientific experiment," said Dr Peter Zeidman, a neuroscientist from University College London who was involved with the research.
"By playing the games people can not only have some fun but can contribute to the latest research in psychology and neuroscience," he added.
Risk taking game introduction
The "Am I Impulsive?" game, for example, asks participants to smash fruit that is falling from a tree using their fingers, but to refrain from smashing it when it is rotting, indicated by the fruit turning brown.
Harnessing big data "That ability to hold yourself back from an action - trying to not do something - is a really important human ability and something we want to understand better.
"People with certain psychiatric illnesses or neurological problems have an impaired ability to inhibit their actions, for example ADHD or schizophrenia... If we can better understand just in the healthy population how people inhibit their actions then we'll learn a lot more," Dr Zeidman told the BBC's Science in Action Programme. READ MORE

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