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Appreciation

07 Oct 2008 12:48:31 pm GMT -8

Lately, I�ve been thinking a great deal about appreciation. In these challenging times, it�s important to find appreciation in our daily lives. I look at [i]Every Body Has a Brain[/i], our new grant for 4-6 year olds, as an opportunity to learn as much from young children as we hope to teach them. This is an age of innocence, trust, creativity, and finding the joy in every moment. Regardless of what�s happening in your life right now, find the appreciation in the little things-- like the child in all of us....

What People are Saying about Neuromatrix

22 Sep 2008 03:23:32 pm GMT -8

I'd like to share an email I received after [i]Neuromatrix[/i] won a Parents' Choice Gold Award. Hi Karen, I wanted to add my congratulations to your company winning a Parents� Choice Gold award. I saw the Neuromatrix game advertised on a website recently, and immediately placed an order for it. I am now absolutely mesmerised by it, and in danger of becoming seriously addicted to playing it. I am guidance and support worker for a government youth support service in the UK and I work on a daily basis with teenagers who often have a huge difficulty in managing themselves and understanding why they feel the way they do and how these feelings transfer into behaviour! Much of my time is spent helping these young people understand how their brains operate. I also facilitate very practical workshops to help teachers understand the parts of the brain and how they operate and link up in the learning process. Your game just ticks so many boxes! It's exciting, dynamic and really up to date in terms of what the neuroscientists are telling us about the human brain. I wish you all organisation every success for the future, and I can't wait for the next game. Kind regards, Annie H....

Morphonix Gets Grant for �Every Body Has a Brain"

15 Sep 2008 08:40:17 am GMT -8

Morphonix received a Phase ll research grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to complete [i]Every Body Has a Brain[/i]. This exciting new game and web site will introduce children age 4-6 to the brain using music, motor, and story-based games....

Neuromatrix Winner of a Parents' Choice Gold Award

11 Sep 2008 07:35:39 am GMT -8

We�re very proud to announce that �Neuromatrix� is the winner of a Parents� Choice Gold award. http://www.parents-choice.org/product.cfm?product_id=24883&StepNum=1&award=aw Here�s their review: Every so often, someone makes a videogame that stands apart due to its creativity or incredible visual impact or educational value. Neuromatrix scores on all of those accounts. Designed to teach kids about the human brain and how to take care of it, as well as intrigue them in the stranger-than-fiction field of neuroscience, this game effectively combines a dramatic storyline and fascinating graphics with some heavy-duty learning to create an unusually engaging game that's both fun and forensic. Plus, it's intuitive and easy, so kids won't turn it off before they get turned on. Players take on the role of a secret agent who must infiltrate a top-secret neuroscience lab where rogue nanobots (microscopic robots) have invaded the brains of the lab's top scientists. Spawned by a secret evil villain, the nanobots' mission is to reprogram the human brain-starting with those who know most about it-and render humans subservient and docile leading to the take-over of the planet Earth. But get this: In conducting brain medically-based diagnostic exams and surfing to different parts of the scientists' brains to "delete" the nanobots, players see what the inside of the brain looks like and how it functions-just like a neurologist would. Lots of grisly (but not gross) internal body scenes that only a scientist or budding scientist could love. Excellent mini-movies glue attention and mini-games make learning about brain functions, well, just a game. Enter the cerebrum, for instance, and play a memory puzzle that's not only fun but also recreates how memories are made inside the brain. Head into the cerebellum game and find out how it automates motor tasks, or the parietal lobe game for lessons in special awareness and navigation. And in the process, using problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, kids learn from synapse to neuron the way the brain works firsthand. Buying this remarkable videogame for your child should be a no-brainer-so to speak. Don Oldenburg �2008 Parents' Choice A former writer and consumer columnist at The Washington Post for 22 years, Don Oldenburg is a freelance writer, editorial consultant and coauthor of "The Washington DC-Baltimore Dog Lovers Companion" (Avalon Travel). The father of three sons, he lives with them and wife, Ann, a writer at USA Today, in McLean, VA....

How videogames are changing our brains

02 Sep 2008 05:41:58 pm GMT -8

Video games and technology are reshaping the brains of our children. The era of the information age where logical left-brain thinking has dominated is shifting to the conceptual age where creativity, seeing the big picture, and understanding our connection to one another will prevail. The videogames and technology today�s children are growing up with are reconfiguring our brains. We now get as much of our information from images on screens as from language. Language is a left-brain function and images require right brain processing. No other mammal has a split brain. What will this shift to right brain, big picture, and creative thinking mean for the future of our children? How can we develop videogames that reinforce what technology is already doing - changing our ability to see the whole picture. How can this shift help children grow up to be compassionate adults who understand their connectedness to others and feel responsible for the world they live in, to understand that we are not isolated beings with the right to destroy one another? Ultimately we need both our left and right brains. While technology is moving us from a left-brain world of words to a right brain world of images and visual processing, eventually we want a balanced brain. We�re in a period of profound transformation as a species and videogames are leading the way to a new way of being in the world.