Though they’re not everyone’s cup of tea, video games can be some of the most fun you can have on a lazy day. The inherent bliss that comes with playing a video game just might help doctors tell whether someone has clinical depression, new research shows. Scientists at New York University developed a three-minute-long game designed to identify a key aspect of depression. People with major depression consistently played the game differently from healthy control subjects, they found. The researchers are already seeking to have their game cleared as a diagnostic tool by the Food and Drug Administration. “We ultimately see this as something that could be used as a thermometer or blood pressure cuff for depression,” senior study author Paul Glimcher, director of the Institute for Translational Neuroscience at NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine, told Gizmodo.
The loss of joy About 70% of clinically depressed people will experience anhedonia, according to the study researchers—an inability to experience much pleasure or joy from normally rewarding things, like food, hobbies, or social interactions. This loss of joy, the researchers say, is linked to something known as a reference point, the unconscious benchmark of expectations that people compare life events to.
