The folks in West Virginia are on a role. First they adopt DDR for use in their public schools to help fight the childhood obesity epidemic, and now a new study from West Virginia's Wheeling Jesuit University has found that certain video games can help people deal with pain.

In the study Effects of Video Game Play Types on Pain Threshold and Tolerance the university's Dr. Bryan Raudenbush and several undergraduate students investigated whether certain video game genres were better than others for distracting patients from painful stimuli. The result? Sports games and fighting games were able to "produce a dramatic level of pain distraction."

The study examined 6 genre types (action, puzzle, arcade, fighting, sport, and boxing). While playing a game for a 10-minute period participants were subjected to a cold pressor test while pain ratings were recorded on a scale from 0-10 every 30 seconds to a maximum of 5 minutes. Physiological measures were monitored (pulse, blood pressures, oxygen saturation) prior to and during these sessions. Additional questionnaires then measured aggressiveness, competitiveness, video game playing habits, mood, and workload.

"These gaming distractions may be most helpful in children and young adults undergoing painful procedures or suffering from chronic pain, as these individuals comprise the largest gamer demographics," explained Dr. Raudenbush, Director of Undergraduate Research and associate professor of psychology at Wheeling Jesuit University.

"There are implications here for children, adolescents, and young adults, all of whom are the primary users of such video games. Physicians could possible implement this in their office to aid in distraction during a painful procedure such as injection or dental work," he continued. "Video games could also be used in waiting rooms to distract patients from upcoming surgical procedures."

Regardless of the study's findings, Penny Arcade's Gabe and Tycho, through their Child's Play initiative, have already been helping children's hospitals nationwide acquire video games for their patients.

The WJU students also took it upon themselves to examine some of the other effects of playing games. Not surprisingly, the study found that game play produced an increase in pulse compared to the baseline condition, especially with action, fighting, sports, and boxing games. Interestingly, sports games (not fighting games) produced the greatest level of anger. Furthermore, "the action and puzzle games produced the most mental demand, the largest physical demand was associated with the boxing game, and the temporal demand was greatest in the arcade and boxing games."

The full results of the study will be presented by Dr. Raudenbush and WJU students Trevor Cessna, Will Esgro, and Ricky Yahn on February 1 during the 2006 Third Annual Undergraduate Research Day in the Capitol Rotunda in Charleston, WV.