【推荐2】Playing video games for hours on end may prepare your child to become a laparoscopic (腹腔镜检查的)doctor one day, a new study has shown. Reorganization of the brain’s cortical (皮质的，皮层的)network in young men with experience of playing video games gives them an advantage not only in playing the games but also in performing other tasks requiring visuomotor (视觉眼肌运动)skills. Researchers from the Centre for Vision Research at York University in Canada compared a group of 13 young men in their twenties, who had played video games at least four hours a week for the past three years, to a group of 13 young men without that experience. The subjects were placed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI) machine and asked to complete a series of increasingly difficult visuomotor tasks, such as using a joystick or looking one way while reaching another way.

“ By using high resolution brain imaging (MRI), we were able to actually measure which brain areas were activated at a given time during the experiment,” said Lauren Sergio, associate professor. “We tested how the skills learned from video game experience can transfer over to new tasks, rather than just looking at brain activity while the subject plays a video game.”

The finding that using visuomotor skills can reorganize how the brain works offers hope for future research into the problems experienced by Alzheimer5s patients, who struggle to complete the simplest visuomotor tasks.

Lead author Joshua Granek added that, in future, it would be interesting to study if the brain pattern changes are affected by the type of video games a player has used and the actual total number of hours he has played, and to study female video gamers, whose brain patterns in earlier studies were different from those of males.

【推荐3】Some people say that dogs are human’s best friend-good companions, loyal and lovable. Of course, they can be more than just a pet as some are excellent working dogs. More recently, a new role has been found for the animals-working as therapy dogs in universities.

Research, conducted by Washington State University, has found that spending time with dogs can help stressed-out students. Patricia Pendry from the university said that a study of 300 undergraduates had found weekly hour-long sessions with dogs brought to the university by professional handlers (训狗师) had made stressed students who were at “high risk of academic failure” or dropping out, “feel relaxed and accepted”. The dogs helped them to concentrate, learn and remember information.

Other research has shown that petting animals like dogs can reduce stress hormone levels and anxiety. Around 1,000 campuses in the US already use therapy pets and it’s becoming more common in the UK. For example, The University of Middlesex has employed some dogs to help stop lonely students dropping out. Fiona Suthers, head of clinical skills at the university, says that five Labradors had a “stringent assessment” to ensure they had the right temperament (性情). But she adds, “It’s hard to describe the impact of just having a dog lying down in the corner of a class.”

Using dogs for therapy can also help the dogs themselves. In Wales, Swansea University Students’ Union has used rescued Greyhounds to help students unwind between exams. Sessions allow mistreated and abandoned dogs to interact with humans and begin to trust them again. Student Union education officer Chloe Hutchinson said, “A lot of students have dogs at home and might be a bit homesick, especially around exam time when it is stressful and you just want your home comforts.”

So if you’re a student who’s been working like a dog, but you still feel like you haven’t a dog’s chance in passing your exams, maybe introducing a four-legged friend into your life might be the help you need.