Video games: Racing, shooting and zapping your way to better visual skills

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1. Probing the morality of video games (Yale Daily News)
   As violent video games continue to become ever more popular and accessible, Tamar Gendler, chair of the cognitive science program and professor of philosophy, and other experts in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science, as well as gamers themselves, are debating whether pulling the trigger on your game console constitutes an immoral act.
2. Nearly 1 In 10 Youth Gamers Addicted To Video Games
   In a new national study of 1,178 American youths, psychologists found nearly one in 10 of the gamers (8.5 percent) to be pathological players according to standards established for pathological gambling.
3. Avatars Can Surreptitiously And Negatively Affect User In Video Games, Virtual Worlds
   Although often seen as an inconsequential feature of digital technologies, one's self-representation, or avatar, in a virtual environment can affect the user's thoughts, according to new research.
4. Learning the art of creating computer games can boot student skills
   Computer games have a broad appeal that transcends gender, culture, age and socioeconomic status. Now, computer scientists think that creating computer games, rather than just playing them could boost students' critical and creative thinking skills as well as broaden their participation in computing.
5. Early visual areas of the brain may have a role in memory
   The traditional view is that perceptual information is processed in early sensory regions of the brain, such as primary visual cortex, before being passed on to memory systems subserved by "high-order" brain areas, such as the prefrontal and inferotemporal cortices. Aside from being an oversimplification, a further problem with this account is that the the high-order brain regions don't have the