Growing up, if you were anything like me, you probably spent a great deal of time playing games, with family members saying nothing good would ever come from it. Sure, games are big business now, and people see the potential that can come from playing games, but to many games are still just a way to unwind and have some fun, completely unaware to the social and scientific possibilities that are being worked on right this minute in ties to the field.

PLAY TWO GAMES AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING
When looking at videogames beyond their scope, it shouldn't be surprising all the similarities that the videogame industry shares with that of the scientific community. Chip sets being placed in computers and consoles and the creation of artificial intelligences are but two of the many similarities and traits that both videogaming and science shares. Beyond the cross communication of technology, videogames themselves are actually being used in a beneficial manner as to advance scientific discovery and breakthroughs.

When it comes to science, healthcare is one of the most vital of all areas, and when you break that down even further, surgeons stack way up there on the totem pole. Surgeons are who we go to in our most trying times; these individuals have studied so many long and hard years to be able to open us up, tinker with our most vital organs, and when everything works out right, heal us from our sickness. With so many surgeries now being done over robotics, where robotic arms are controlled by a surgeon from many miles away who can't physically be on site, not to mention the care with which a surgeon must use his hands when they are on site, they need to make sure their hands are as deft and nimble as could be, and as any good videogame player knows, games certainly go a long way to improving eye/hand coordination.

One such study regarding the matter, asking if playing games could indeed help cut surgical errors, yielded an astoundingly positive result for videogames. The game series central to the study was Super Monkey Ball, a title much more suited to mimic that of the surgeon more so than a fighting game like Tekken per say. In Super Monkey Ball, players control monkeys that are encapsulated in clear, spherical balls, and it is the player's job to maneuver their ball around tracks of various difficulties, featuring such dastardly dilemmas as balancing their ball on a tiny walkway that offers no leeway, and the player must carefully adjust their movements by constantly checking and adjusting with their hands. As for the stats to come from the study, the official word was:

Surgeons who warmed up by playing video games like "Super Monkey Ball" for 20 minutes immediately prior to performing surgical drills were faster and made fewer errors than those who did not, said Dr. James "Butch" Rosser, lead investigator on the study slated for release Wednesday.

The research involved 303 surgeons participating in a medical training course that included video games and was focused on laparoscopic surgical procedures -- which use a tiny video camera and long, slender instruments inserted through small incisions.

The study was conducted by Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City in conjunction with the National Institute on Media and the Family.

Doctors were measured on their performance of the "cobra rope" drill, a standard laparoscopic training exercise used to teach how to sew up an internal wound.

Researchers found that surgeons who played video games immediately before the drill completed it an average of 11 seconds faster than those who did not.

Any errors committed during the training lengthened the time it took to complete the task -- indicating that faster finishers made fewer mistakes.

Whether or not the theory came from someone's natural love of videogames, trying to see if they could merge the two together or find a way to make them fit, it really is beside the point, as the truth is that it worked. By playing videogames, these researchers learned that by playing simply 20 minutes before a procedure (given it was a drill and not the actual event which is sure to run the gamut of emotions) it increased the surgeon's performance a great deal, and thus, if it was a real life scenario, offering the person on the operating table and his loved ones a better opportunity at living a longer life, instead of the grief a failure would surely cause.