A study has shown that motion gaming can help to reduce symptoms of degenerative ataxia – a genetic disorder that causes problems with coordination and movement – in adolescents.
The research team chose three motion-controlled games that required goal-directed limb movement, dynamic balance, and whole-body coordination, and had ten adolescents play them for at least one hour at least four times a week. After eight weeks, those adolescents had significantly reduced symptoms compared with their baseline levels.
This news joins last week's report of a study in which a hospital-made game called RAGE Control has been shown to help children undergoing treatment for high levels of anger, and similar cases seem to be on the rise as video games gain traction in wider society, i.e. not just among select groups.
The groups of participants in these studies are generally small, which is a problem if you want to generalise your findings to the population as a whole, but even so the results are promising. It's not too much of a leap of the imagination to imagine that children will be more likely to participate in and benefit from physiotherapeutic treatment if it looks and feels like a video game. Wouldn't you?