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About Me

I'm a recent Master's graduate from Caltech with a degree in Chemistry. I'm currently living in Pasadena, CA, with a degree I don't want to use, trying to break into the game industry. I've been reading Destructoid since June of 2006. I'm a huge Nintendo fanboy, though I spend most of my gaming time on the 360 these days. I've got far too many posts on the forum.

I play all types of games except realistic sports games and real-time strategy games. The former because I think they're boring and the latter because I utterly suck at them.

I've got an Examiner page. That place pays based on hits, comments, and subscriptions, so if you like my stuff, go check that out. If you don't like my stuff, go tell me how awful I am over there!

Games I'm currently playing:
Burnout Paradise (360)
Left 4 Dead 2 (360)
Lego Rock Band (360)
Mass Effect (360)
Modern Warfare 2 (360)
ModNation Racers (PS3)
New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)
Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)
Valkyria Chronicles (PS3)

Games that are on the back burner:
BioShock (360, need to go back and get the Achievements I missed)
Crush (PSP, I never really think to play my PSP)
Culdcept SAGA (360, the battles just take way too long)
Grand Theft Auto IV (360, it just didn't draw me in like the old games)
Mario Kart Wii (Wii, I just never feel like playing its single player)
Rock Band 2 (360, Just missing one Achievement: Endless Setlist without pausing or failing)
Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, need to complete with Luigi)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii, same issue as with Mario Kart)

Games I haven't even touched yet:
Crackdown (360)
de Blob (Wii)
God of War (PS2)
MadWorld (Wii)
Metal Gear Solid 1-3 (PS1, PS2)
Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath (Xbox)
Okami (PS2)
Persona 3: FES (PS2)
Project Gotham Racing 4 (360)
Quantum of Solace (360)
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Wii)

Games I have finished 100% during this console generation:
1 vs. 100 (XBLA)
Aegis Wing (XBLA)
Banjo-Kazooie (XBLA)
Bionic Commando: Rearmed (XBLA)
Bomberman Live (XBLA)
Borderlands (360)
Call of Duty 2 (360)
Call of Duty 4 (360)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (XBLA)
Halo 3 (360)
Fable II: Pub Games (XBLA)
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (DS)
Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (XBLA)
Modern Warfare 2 (360)
NEVES (DS)
Omega Five (XBLA)
Pac-Man C.E. (XBLA)
Peggle (XBLA)
Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 1 (XBLA)
Penny Arcade Adventures Episode 2 (XBLA)
Picross DS (DS)
Picross 3D (DS)
Professor Layton & the Curious Village (DS)
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (PS3)
Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty (PSN)
Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (XBLA)
Shadow Complex (XBLA)
skate. (360)
Uno (XBLA)
Worms (XBLA)

Promoted Blogs:
The start of the affair: Earthbound
True stories from Destructoid's E3 Intern Bitch 2008
The FEAR: The Red Ring of Death
Untapped potential: motion control
Checking out Halo 3: ODST through the ODST tour
Improving game communities: gaming together
The wrong thing: the procrastinating protagonist
What will be the last game you ever play?
Teh Bias: The Evolution of Dexter's Bias

Gamer Profile

3DS friend code:
Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/profil
Battle:
PSN: Dexter345
Mii: 1257 7687 3747 6405
Gamertag: Dexter345

Following (80)

SCIENCE! Can Brain Age help to combat schizophrenia symptoms? Darren Nakamura | 7:02 PM on 03.25.2009 5 comments

Schizophrenia is something I sometimes worry about myself. It is more likely to affect males than females, and it typically shows its first signs during the late teens to mid-twenties. In other words, I sometimes neurotically think that I could end up schizophrenic tomorrow. And the worst part? I probably wouldn't even realize it. Luckily, some new research has shown that brain training video games can help to ease certain symptoms in schizophrenics, namely attention and memory deficits, and perhaps more importantly, distortion or complete lack of inhibition. Indeed, this could possibly be the first real tenable study that demonstrates a possibility that playing a video can help to prevent violent behavior. The study, done at UC San Francisco, involved one group of schizophrenia sufferers to play a brain training game (one developed specifically for research purposes rather than commercially, it seems), while another group played unspecified "ordinary video games," after which both groups were tested with several different cognitive tasks. The test group scored better than the control group on the aforementioned functions, though they showed no statistically significant difference in speed of mental processing or verbal working memory. Have you written off these brain training games as being a neat little novelty with little real life use? I know I had. Now, though, I may fire up Brain Age again and get into the habit of playing it daily. You know, just in case I become schizophrenic. [Via Scientific American] Attached photos: