Mind-controlled video games for teaching kids (and kids at heart) mindfulness, attentional focus and self-compassion skills.

From a team of former neuroscientists, engineers and game designers with backgrounds from MIT, Stanford and the Harvard-MIT-MGH Martinos center.

Problem

Traumatic stress affects millions of students in a culture where bullying, fear and issues with self-esteem are far too commonplace. Over a period of months and years, chronic stress can lead to stunted academic achievement and poorer physical and mental health outcomes.

Solution

Mindfulness and meditation are scientifically validated tools for resolving many of the issues in teen lives (like stress) that are not well addressed by our academic curriculum. Unfortunately, the practice of mindfulness is completely absent from mainstream youth culture. Current attempts to use popular media to encourage meditation training amongst teens has been viewed as out-of-touch with modern entertainment standards and largely rejected by youth. Rather than taking existing video game designs and attempting to “chocolate coat” didactic material into them, we bring brainwave sensing technologies that can be used to create entirely new genres of video games that are both completely novel experiences to youth and naturally lend themselves to training mindfulness. By designing video games that use E.E.G. brainmapping technology as the primary input device, rather than a traditional hand-controlled console controller, we can create first-class mindfulness and meditation games.

Example

Kids can play these “mindful games” either at home, after school or in a traditional classroom environment. Users simply put on the headset and load the game application, where their environment and progress is then controlled by their mental states. Current early prototypes using this technology include Star Wars themes where Jedi control of objects is based on the player’s concentration levels. Anthropomorphic flora that grows and responds to a player’s para-sympathetic nervous system. Characters that only respond favorably when the player approaches them in a mental state proven correlated with compassion and empathy. By attaching these and other novel mechanics to interactive game worlds, we can sculpt the players experience to bring them into a range of positive mental states. The headset reads the child’s attention/meditation levels on a second-by-second basis, acting as a novel and exciting interface into the mindfulness game. After the game play is finished, or assigned “homework” levels have been completed, teachers can optionally review the students attention and meditation scores to make sure they are engaging and benefiting from the application fully, helping them learn alternative focus and mindfulness techniques if necessary.

Marketplace

Companies like emindful.com offer mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) courses to adults, and various neurofeedback clinics offer meditation and attention training to kids, but no one offers it to them directly and in a medium (games) that they understand.