Filed under: Video Games
In a radical new study, South Korean psychiatrists at Chung Ang University, College of Medicine, claim to have reduced participants’ desire to spend hours online playing ‘Starcraft’ by dosing them with antidepressants. According to Wired UK, 11 participants in the study took doses of Bupropion, which also reduces the desire to smoke, over a six-week period. These participants were chosen because they had each regularly played ‘Starcraft’ for at least four hours a day. That didn’t strike us as too excessive, until we read that six of the participants had missed more than two months of school, and that two of them had been divorced — all because of their addictions. But, after drug treatment, the group’s desire to play ‘StarCraft’ dropped by 23.6-percent, and the overall amount of time they spent playing the game dropped by 35.5-percent (maybe because they were zonked out on pills). Furthermore, MRIs of the player’s brains post-drug intake showed weaker reactions to pictures of Zerglings — the six-limbed raptors from ‘StarCraft.’ If the prospect of a Zerg-rush doesn’t excite a medicated player, perhaps the cure to the ‘StarCraft’ disease has been found. [From: PubMed.gov, via: Wired UK]
South Korean Psychiatrists Dose ‘StarCraft’ Addicts With Antidepressants originally appeared on Switched on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 07:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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