According to a study by a group of
Belgian scientists, having a good night's sleep could improve your chances of finding your way around a foreign city or
a map from a first person shooter. After being trained up in a custom version of Duke Nukem, volunteers were
asked to find landmarks around a virtual city while their brains were being scanned with MRI. They were then split into
two groups: one group was allowed a good night's sleep and the other was not.When the volunteers were asked to play the game again, the scientists found that the group that were allowed to sleep used a different region of their brain to find their way around the map which allowed them to make almost automatic decisions about where to go. However, the sleep-deprived players used the same region of the brain as they used when they were being trained which required more thinking. What the study suggests is that sleep accelerates the normal process of memory retrieval -- a well rested individual will "somehow know that [he/she has] to turn left, or right or carry straight on."
A great example of the usefulness of games in scientific research, but what we want to know is: did anyone take any pictures of the massive scientists-only LAN party at the end?!
[Thanks, Nik G]
