Digital games facilitate learning about mental illness

University of Cologne

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Digital games can contribute to educating people – particularly those who do not suffer from mental illness – about depression, a new study by the media psychologists Dr Marco Rüth, Raoul Bachmayer and Professor Kai Kaspar from the University of Cologne has shown. Digital games can help people to recognize symptoms of depression and to develop empathy for those affected by it. The results of the online study have been published under the title “Learning about depression by watching gaming videos: A case study on the potential of digital games for psychoeducation and destigmatization” in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

People suffering from depression experience limitations beyond those directly associated with the illness itself. The stigmatization surrounding the disease can also cause additional stress. Conveying knowledge about mental illness (psychoeducation) can help to reduce stigmatization, or to destigmatize it. Different media can help people, particularly those without depression, to become more aware of its symptoms and to better empathize with people who are depressed. Mental illnesses are portrayed in many media, including digital games. However, digital games have so far hardly been used for psychoeducation and destigmatization, even though they can reach many people due to their popularity.

The 117 participants in the study watched excerpts from a digital game on the subject of depression. They then noted which aspects of the digital game had left a lasting impression on them and what effects the digital game has had on them. According to the results of the study, based on 298 responses to a question regarding learning effects of the game, watching gaming videos imparted knowledge about depression and the importance of the personal environment, among other things. A further 307 statements on effects of the game on the participants revealed that negative emotions such as sadness, stress or strain but also empathy were evoked. Based on 284 statements, the study participants further assumed that the game shown might have similar effects on other people. In addition to these effects, there was a high general motivation to learn about depression, as well as a strong conviction that digital games can be an interesting and relevant medium for this purpose.

Finally, with regard to destigmatization, the study shows that gender, knowledge about depression, and motivation to learn about depression all play an important role in people’s thoughts about depression. The stigmatization of others was higher among participants who were male and who had less knowledge and less learning motivation regarding depression.

Overall, this study sheds light on the valuable role that digital games can play in psychoeducation and destigmatization. According to the authors of the study, more research is needed on using and viewing digital games, such as on the type and intensity of engagement with individual aspects such as narratives.

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Journal

Frontiers in Psychology

DOI

10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1585571 

Article Title

Learning about depression by watching gaming videos: A case study on the potential of digital games for psychoeducation and destigmatization

Brain training game offers new hope for drug-free pain management

University of New South Wales

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From left: Software engineer Kevin Yi Chen and PhD candidate Lara Alexander, part of the interdisciplinary PainWaive team, speak with Professor Sylvia Gustin.

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Credit: Elva Darnell

A trial of an interactive game that trains people to alter their brain waves has shown promise as a treatment for nerve pain – offering hope for a new generation of drug-free treatments.

The PainWaive technology, developed by UNSW Sydney researchers, teaches users how to regulate abnormal brain activity linked to chronic nerve pain, offering a potential in-home, non-invasive alternative to opioids.

A recent trial of the technology, led by Professor Sylvia Gustin and Dr Negin Hesam-Shariati from UNSW Sydney’s NeuroRecovery Research Hub, has delivered promising results, published in the Journal of Pain.

The study compared hundreds of measures across participants' pain and related issues like pain interference before, during and after four weeks of interactive game play. Their brain activity was tracked via EEG (electroencephalogram) headsets, with the app responding in real time to shifts in brainwave patterns.

Three out of the four participants showed significant reductions in pain, particularly nearing the end of the treatment. Overall, the pain relief achieved by the three was comparable to or greater than that offered by opioids.

“Restrictions in the study’s size, design and duration limit our ability to generalise the findings or rule out placebo effects,” Dr Hesam-Shariati says.

“But the results we’ve seen are exciting and give us confidence to move to the next stage and our larger trial."

The PainWaive project builds on UNSW Professor Sylvia Gustin’s seminal research into changes in the brain’s thalamus – a central relay hub in the brain – associated with nerve (neuropathic) pain.

“The brainwaves of people with neuropathic pain show a distinct pattern: more slow theta waves, fewer alpha waves, and more fast, high beta waves,” Prof. Gustin says.

“We believe these changes interfere with how the thalamus talks to other parts of the brain, especially the sensory motor cortex, which registers pain."

“I wondered, can we develop a treatment that directly targets and normalises these abnormal waves?"

The challenge was taken up by an interdisciplinary team at UNSW Science and Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), led by Prof. Gustin and Dr Hesam-Shariati, and resulted in PainWaive.

The four participants in its first trial received a kit with a headset and a tablet preloaded with the game app, which includes directions for its use. They were also given tips for different mental strategies, like relaxing or focusing on happy memories, to help bring their brain activity into a more “normal” state.

The user data, meanwhile, was uploaded to the research team for remote monitoring.

“After just a couple of Zoom sessions, participants were able to run the treatment entirely on their own,” says Dr Hesam-Shariati.

“Participants felt empowered to manage their pain in their own environment. That’s a huge part of what makes this special."

Initially, Dr Hesam-Shariati says, the team planned to use existing commercial EEG systems, but they were either too expensive or didn’t meet the quality needed to deliver the project. Instead, they developed their own.

“Everything except the open-source EEG board was built in-house,” says Dr Hesam-Shariati. “And soon, even that will be replaced by a custom-designed board.”

Thanks to 3D printing, Prof. Gustin says, the team has cut the cost of each headset to around $300 – a fraction of the $1,000 to $20,000 price tags of existing systems.

The headset uses a saline-based wet electrode system to improve signal quality and targets the sensorimotor cortex.

“We’ve worked closely with patients to ensure the headset is lightweight, comfortable, and user-friendly,” says Prof. Gustin.

“Owning the technology offers us the potential to one day offer PainWaive as a truly affordable, accessible solution for at-home pain management, especially for those with limited access to traditional treatments."

The researchers are now calling for participants to register their interest in two upcoming trials of the neuromodulation technology: the Spinal Pain Trial, investigating its potential to reduce chronic spinal pain, and the StoPain Trial, exploring its use in treating chronic neuropathic pain in people with a spinal cord injury.

From left: Software engineer Kevin Yi Chen and PhD candidate Lara Alexander, part of the interdisciplinary PainWaive team, speak with Professor Sylvia Gustin.

Dr Negin Hesam Shariati explains the PainWaive technology.

Credit

Elva Darnell

Journal

Journal of Pain

DOI

10.1016/j.jpain.2025.105394 

Method of Research

Case study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

The Effect of an EEG Neurofeedback Intervention for Corneal Neuropathic Pain: A Single-Case Experimental Design with Multiple Baselines

Article Publication Date

2-Jun-2025

 

Could poverty trigger the next pandemic?

Socioeconomic factors like poor access to health care, globalization drive disease outbreaks

University of Georgia

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Socioeconomic factors may be a driving force behind the emergence and spread of animal-borne disease outbreaks, according to new research from the University of Georgia and Oklahoma State University.

The study found that outbreaks of bacterial diseases, such as tuberculosis, plague and salmonella, were caused by things like poverty, international travel and poor access to health care, among others.

Meanwhile, environmental factors like changing weather patterns, natural disasters, close contact with livestock or wildlife can spark viral disease outbreaks. But it is often socioeconomic factors that help these diseases spread widely.

“It’s important to think about what conditions we are creating that might lead to disease outbreaks in the future,” said Payton Phillips, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at UGA’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. “It’s our behavior, our medical systems, our travel, our economic conditions that play a role in disease outbreaks.

“Knowing that these factors are so important, we need to push for better sanitation, improved water quality and more funding for medical interventions to keep outbreaks under control.”

Socioeconomic, environmental factors key to stopping disease outbreaks

The researchers analyzed data from more than 300 global disease outbreaks, including the 100 largest outbreaks between 1977 and 2017. The scientists examined 48 different drivers of disease outbreaks, divided into socioeconomic or environmental categories.

Some of the socioeconomic factors included antibiotic use, contaminated water and food, sewage management and public health infrastructure. Environmental factors included climate change; the spread of disease vectors, such as mosquitoes; and the introduction of invasive species, among others.

“If we know there are socioeconomic issues, like if water sanitation is a problem for a local area, then we can try to address it ahead of an outbreak,” Phillips said. “We can and should be more proactive.”

Emerging diseases frequently come from animals

More than six out of every 10 infectious diseases in people originate in animal populations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And 75% of emerging diseases come from animals.

People originally become infected with these diseases through interactions with animals. This can happen directly, such as touching a sick animal or being bitten by one, or indirectly by consuming contaminated water or food, like raw milk or undercooked meat.

“Many viruses are naturally found in certain animals,” Phillips said. “But it’s our behavior that allows them to spread.”

For example, scientists believe the viruses that cause Ebola originated in bats. Once an Ebola outbreak spills over into humans, the disease begins rapidly spreading from person to person.

Not every disease is capable of human-to-human spread. Avian influenza, for instance, appears to not easily spread from one infected person to another. But as more species are infected with a virus or bacteria, the threat of evolution — and the ability to spread between people — rises.

Published in Microorganisms, the study was co-authored by Sneha Dharwadkar, a doctoral student in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine, and Mekala Sundaram, an assistant professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases and the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. Additional co-authors include Oklahoma State University’s Negin Nazari, Antoine Filion, Benedicta Akaribo and Patrick Stephens.

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Journal

Microorganisms

DOI

10.3390/microorganisms13030621 

Article Title

Socioeconomic and Eco-Environmental Drivers Differentially Trigger and Amplify Bacterial and Viral Outbreaks of Zoonotic Pathogens

 

Researchers recreate ancient Egyptian blues

Washington State University

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Researchers Travis Olds and Lisa Haney from the Carnegie Museum examine an ancient sarcophagus that was painted with Egyptian blue pigment.

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Credit: Washington State University

PULLMAN, Wash.--A team of Washington State University-led researchers has recreated the world's oldest synthetic pigment, called Egyptian blue, which was used in ancient Egypt about 5,000 years ago.

Reporting in the journal, NPJ Heritage Science, the researchers used a variety of raw materials and heating times to develop 12 recipes for the pigments, providing useful information for archaeologists and conservation scientists who study the ancient Egyptian materials. The work was done in collaboration with Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute.

“We hope this will be a good case study in what science can bring to the study of our human past,” said John McCloy, first author on the paper and director of WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. “The work is meant to highlight how modern science reveals hidden stories in ancient Egyptian objects.”

While Egyptian blue pigment was valued in ancient times, there is limited archaeological evidence of how it was made. It was used as a substitute for expensive minerals like turquoise or lapis lazuli and was used in painting wood, stone, and a papier-mâché-type material called cartonnage. Depending on its ingredients and processing time, its color ranges from deep blue to dull gray or green. After the Egyptians, the pigment was used by Romans, but by the Renaissance period, the knowledge of how it was made was largely forgotten.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in the pigment because it has interesting optical, magnetic, and biological properties with potential new technological applications, said McCloy. The pigment emits light in the near-infrared part of the electro-magnetic spectrum that people can’t see, which means it could be used for things like fingerprinting and counterfeit-proof inks. It also has a similar chemistry to high-temperature superconductors.

“It started out just as something that was fun to do because they asked us to produce some materials to put on display at the museum, but there’s a lot of interest in the material,” said McCloy, who, in addition to being a professor in materials science and engineering, has a master’s degree in anthropology.

To understand its makeup, the researchers, including a mineralogist and an Egyptologist, created 12 different recipes of the pigment from mixtures of silicon dioxide, copper, calcium, and sodium carbonate. They heated the material at about 1000 degrees Celsius for between one and 11 hours to replicate temperatures that would have been available for ancient artists. After cooling the samples at various rates, they studied the pigments using modern microscopy and analysis techniques that had never been used for this type of research, comparing them to two ancient Egyptian artifacts.

Egyptian blue included a variety of blue colors, depending on where they were made and their quality. The researchers found that the pigment is highly heterogeneous.

“You had some people who were making the pigment and then transporting it, and then the final use was somewhere else,” said McCloy. “One of the things that we saw was that with just small differences in the process, you got very different results.”

The researchers found that, in fact, to get the bluest color requires only about 50% of the blue-colored components.

 “It doesn’t matter what the rest of it is, which was really quite surprising to us,” said McCloy. “You can see that every single pigment particle has a bunch of stuff in it -- it’s not uniform by any means.”

The samples created are currently on display at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and will become part of the museum’s new long-term gallery focused on ancient Egypt.

 

  

Closeup image of an ancient wooden Egyptian falcon. Researchers have found a way to repoduce the blue pigment visible on the artifact, which is the world's oldest synthetic pigment.

Credit

Matt Unger, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

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Journal

npj Heritage Science

DOI

10.1038/s40494-025-01699-7 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Assessment of process variability and color in synthesized and ancient Egyptian blue pigments

 

Discovery could boost solid-state battery performance

University of Texas at Dallas

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Materials science and engineering doctoral student Jiaqi Ke conducts electrochemical testing using a three-electrode cell setup to evaluate the stability of a newly developed electrolyte.

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Credit: The University of Texas at Dallas

An emerging technology to make lithium-ion batteries safer and more powerful involves using solid rather than liquid electrolytes, the materials that make it possible for ions to move through the device to generate power.

A team of University of Texas at Dallas researchers and their colleagues have discovered that the mixing of small particles between two solid electrolytes can generate an effect called a “space charge layer,” an accumulation of electric charge at the interface between the two materials.

The finding could aid the development of batteries with solid electrolytes, called solid-state batteries, for applications including mobile devices and electric vehicles. The researchers published their study in ACS Energy Letters, where it is featured on the cover of the March issue.

Researchers discovered that the mixing of small particles between two solid electrolytes can generate an effect called a “space charge layer,” an accumulation of electric charge at the interface between two solid electrolytes depicted in this illustration.

When the separate solid electrolyte materials make physical contact, a layer forms at their boundary where charged particles, or ions, accumulate due to differences in each material’s chemical potential, said Dr. Laisuo Su, assistant professor of materials science and engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and a co-corresponding author of the study. He said the layer helps create pathways that make it easier for ions to move across the interface.

“Imagine mixing two ingredients in a recipe and unexpectedly getting a result that is better than either ingredient alone,” Su said. “This effect boosted the movement of ions beyond what either material could achieve by itself.

“This discovery suggests a new way to design better solid electrolytes by carefully choosing materials that interact in a way that enhances ionic movement, potentially leading to better-performing solid-state batteries.”

The research is a project of UTD’s Batteries and Energy to Advance Commercialization and National Security (BEACONS) initiative, which launched in 2023 with $30 million from the Department of Defense to develop and commercialize new battery technology and manufacturing processes, enhance the domestic availability of critical raw materials, and train high-quality workers for industry.

“Solid-state battery technology is part of our next-gen battery chemistries research at the BEACONS center, and it is expected to enable advanced battery systems to improve the performance of drones for defense applications,” said Dr. Kyeongjae Cho, professor of materials science and engineering, director of BEACONS and a co-corresponding author of the study.

Most lithium-ion batteries currently used in consumer products contain liquid electrolytes, which are flammable and can present safety issues. Although conventional lithium-ion batteries are reaching the theoretical limit of how much energy they can store, Su said solid-state batteries show promise for generating and storing more than twice as much power as batteries with liquid electrolytes, and they are safer because they are not flammable.

The development of solid-state batteries faces challenges, however, because it is more difficult to move ions through solid materials. The researchers studied the performance of the solid-state electrolyte compounds lithium zirconium chloride and lithium yttrium chloride and proposed a theory to explain why mixing the materials increased ionic activity.

“The interface formed unique channels for ion transport,” Su said.

Su and fellow researchers plan to continue to study how the composition and structure of the interface leads to greater ionic conductivity.

Other UT Dallas researchers who contributed to the work include Dr. Boyu Wang, first author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher with BEACONS; and Dr. Yue Zhou, associate professor of mechanical engineering.

The UTD team collaborated with two researchers from Texas Tech University: Dr. Zeeshan Ahmad, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a co-corresponding author; and Md Salman Rabbi Limon, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering.

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Journal

ACS Energy Letters

DOI

10.1021/acsenergylett.4c03398 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

1 +1 > 2 Effect Induced by Space Charge in Solid Electrolytes