Video gaming BOOSTS your ability to concentrate in a crisis

Action packed video games are often criticised for being distracting and encouraging violent behaviour. However, a review published today has found that people who play 'shoot 'em ups' such as Halo and Call of Duty have far better visual attention than their non-gaming peers.

This mental skill allows people to focus on relevant visual information while suppressing irrelevant data. It helps us to pick out a friend's face from a crowd or drive a car along a busy street without getting sensory overload.

The review, led by Dr Daphne Bavelier from the University of Rochester looked at how gaming can affect our ability to cope with the almost overwhelming amount of visual data that we must process every day. The study, published in WIREs Cognitive Science, found gamers consistently outstripped non-gamers in visual attention tests.

The authors referred to a number of training studies that found non-gamers could improve their visual attention by playing video games, establishing that the games themselves were causing the benefits. However, only fast-paced, action based games provided this benefit. These games emphasised rapid responses to visual information and required divided attention.

Study co-author Bjorn Hubert-Wallander, said: 'Just as drivers have to focus on the road, other cars, and potential obstacles while ignoring other information, modern action games place heavy attentional demands on players. 'These games require players to aim and shoot accurately in the center of the screen while continuously tracking other enemies and fast moving objects.'

The findings could have implications for military training as well as clinical rehabilitation programs for conditions such as amblyopia or 'lazy eye.'

Co-author Shawn Green said: 'At the core of these action video game-induced improvements appears to be a remarkable enhancement in the ability to flexibly and precisely control attention, a finding that could have a variety of real-world applications.

'For example, those in professions that demand "super-normal" visual attention, such as fighter pilots, would benefit enormously from enhanced visual attention, as their performance and lives depend on their ability to react quickly and accurately to primarily visual information.'

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'Spare tyre' could save lives: Study finds belly fat helped heart attack patients

This is a tiny study reporting tiny improvements in heart function so the results will most likely wash out in a larger trial

Stem cells taken from waistline fat could be used as a treatment for heart attacks. Scientists injected stem cells derived from waistline fat tissue into the hearts of coronary patients and found the cells reduced levels of damage, increased blood flow and improved the organs' pumping ability.

Eleven men and three women who had suffered recent heart attacks took part in the pioneering pilot study, given the name Apollo. Ten patients were treated with stem cells while four received a dummy 'placebo' infusion.

Liposuction - a cosmetic procedure commonly used to reduce people's waistlines - was used to remove up to 250 cubic centimetres of fat from the patients' bellies. From each sample, the researchers isolated and extracted 20 million adult stem cells - regenerative cells with the potential to become more than one kind of tissue.

It took nine to ten minutes to infuse the stem cells into a patient's heart.

Six months later members of the treated group showed a 3.5 per cent improvement in heart perfusion, the heart's ability to receive oxygenated blood. Compared with the placebo patients, they also experienced a 5.7 per cent increase in the amount of blood pumped out by the heart's left ventricle chamber.

On average, the amount of damaged heart muscle in the treated patients was halved from 31.6 per cent to 15.4 per cent. In the non-treated group, levels of heart damage remained the same.

The stem cells did not interfere with blood flow and were not associated with any potentially dangerous changes in heart rhythm, the study found.

Lead researcher Dr Eric Duckers, from Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, said: 'The study suggests that these cells can be safely obtained and infused inside the hearts of patients following an acute heart attack.'

The findings were presented today at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions meeting in Chicago.

Dr Duckers has now started work on a bigger follow-up trial, called Advance, that will recruit up to 375 patients from 35 European centres. It will focus on heart attack patients with a left ventricle ejection fraction - a measure of the heart's pumping performance - of less than 45 per cent .

Forty per cent of patients will receive 20 million stem cells while another 40 per cent will get a larger dose of 30 million cells. The remaining 20 per cent will make up the placebo group.

The condition of the patients' hearts will be checked after six months.

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