A new game developed by Wisdom Tools in partnership with New England Research Institutes (NERI) hopes to teach children and parents about the importance of medical clinical trials and to dispel myths and misconceptions about them. The game is called "The Paper Kingdom," and is available for free via the website of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health.

A new study finds that MS patients who used the Wii Balance Board five days a week to play dance and snowboarding games had better balance. According to the lead author of the study Dr. Luca Prosperini (a neurologist at Sapienza University in Rome, Italy), this type of therapy is useful because there are no drugs on the market that restore or improve balance for those suffering from the disease.

Mental health charity Take This is returning to PAX Prime again this year with an AFK Room and a special panel led by the group's founders and other contributors.

"PAX has been a huge part of the success of Take This in being able to reach those who need help dealing with mental health issues in the greater video gaming community," said Take This president Russ Pitts. "It's an honor to be able to return to the show in an expanded role, and to hopefully help more people and spread more awareness about these very important issues."

Depression Quest, an interactive fiction game about dealing with the peaks and valleys of depression, has finally made its way to Steam this week. Available for free, Depression Quest is the creation of Zoe Quinn. The game was originally released on February 14 of last year, but had to wait until January of this year to get the "greenlight" from Steam.

ECA Community Manager, prolific podcaster, and all around nice guy Jose Betancourt has a very important episode of his show, The Post Game Report. On the show Jose talks about how sleep apnea affected his life prior to getting it treated. Over the years he described feeling run-down - a feeling he attributed to too much work, schooling, podcasting, and working - and not getting enough sleep.

Developer Pixelberry's High School Story, a game that took on the issue of bullying in High School, has set its sights on another important issue: teen boy image issues and eating disorders. A new version of the mobile game aims to provide "educational resources and professional support to the 20.2 million American teenagers who are unhappy with their bodies."

The new version of the U.S. Army's official training simulator is getting a little more realistic about weight and how it affects soldiers in the field. The Army's official simulation software, Virtual Battlespace 3, developed by Bohemia Interactive (makers of ARMA and DayZ), adds avatar customization. If a soldier using the simulation is overweight, his or her avatar will look overweight. But more than mere aesthetics, that weight will affect fatigue levels on the virtual field of battle.

UK charity Special Effect has put up a very interesting video of a man with spinal muscular atrophy playing Minecraft with his eyebrows. You've read that right; he's playing Mojang's popular world-building sandbox game using the power of moving his eyebrows up and down, and it's pretty amazing to watch.

During a NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference 2014 keynote, "Video Games and the Future of Cognitive Enhancement," by Dr. Adam Gazzaley revealed that his game "NeuroRacer" has been submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval as a treatment for the elderly. Gazzaley is an Associate Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, whose work focuses on the quality of life as people age. Gazzaley and other researchers have found that playing video games improves a person's mental speed and agility in real life.

Actress Bailee Madison and Starlight Children's Foundation will launch the first inaugural Play in May campaign next month. The charity event highlights the healing power of play for hospitalized kids while raising funds to support Starlight programs. Starting May 1, individuals and teams can pledge to play games for 15 minutes a day for 15 days and get friends, neighbors, coworkers and family members to sponsor the activity by making a donation.

Most parents of young children will tell you that it is hard to get your children to brush their teeth regularly and properly without some prodding, nagging and constant reminders. Luckily, there's an app for that.

AbleGamers will return to Boston, Massachusetts for the PAX East gaming conference, April 11-13, 2014. The group's annual Pachinko-themed fundraising event gathers support from video game publishers and developers, including EA, Blizzard, Square Enix, PlayStation, and many more, to offer prizes to those who donate to the AbleGamers Charity.

Mental health awareness organization 'Take This' announced that it will be continuing its association with PAX at PAX East 2014, with a presentation on the best way to discuss important mental health issues with co-workers, a dedicated "AFK Room" for attendees who need a quiet space to take a break from the show and a program specifically designed to help PAX East's volunteer "Enforcers" with recognizing and assisting attendees in need.

It is with deep regret that we report that Joel Green, the young child who is the inspiration for That Dragon, Cancer, has passed away. This heartbreaking news comes from the That Dragon, Cancer website and an update to Joel's personal website.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington College of Nursing, Baylor Scott & White Health and UT Dallas have developed a simulation game that teaches doctors and nurses to work more collaboratively and to avoid conflicts that can bottleneck patient care. The game puts participants in tense situations in a virtual world so that they can learn how best to avoid those situations in the real world.

AbleGamers Founder Mark Barlet announced during his SXSW speech this weekend that the first Canadian Game Accessibility Lab (or AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade) will be hosted by the University of Toronto. The arcade will include the "most up-to-date technology and controllers designed to enable gamers with disabilities access to today’s most popular video games," according to AbleGamers. It will be hosted by the Semaphore Research Cluster, which is part of the iSchool (Faculty of Information), on a permanent basis.

The Neurotechnology Industry Organization announced that the NeuroGaming Conference & Expo will return to San Francisco May 7-8 with a line-up of high profile speakers, new exhibitors, and even a gamejam to make this year's event memorable. In its second year, the NeuroGaming Conference focuses on the convergence of mind and body with game play using all kinds of cutting-edge technology including virtual reality, neurosensing, motion and gesture control, augmented reality, haptics, eye tracking, facial recognition and more.

AbleGamers Charity Founder and Executive Director, Mark Barlet, will deliver a keynote at SXSW this month. Bartlet's speech will be delivered at the SXSW Long Center March 8, 2014 from 12:30 – 1:30. All SXSW participants are welcome and the talk itself is open to the public. AbleGamers encourages all developers and gamers to attend. A brief Q & A will be held after the event.

After playing an educational video game for just 15 minutes children understood what do if someone was having a stroke, according to new research reported in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. Researchers tested 210 9- and 10-year-old "low-income children" from the Bronx, New York, on whether they could identify a stroke and knew to call 9-1-1 if they saw someone having one. Researchers then tested the children again after they played a stroke education video game called Stroke Hero.

Yale University's Play2Prevent lab is using a grant from the Women’s Health Research at the Yale Pilot Program to create a game that teaches about effective ways to reduce HIV infections among young African American women. The team will spend this year working with groups of black teens and 20-year-olds to design a game that will be "relevant, entertaining and a model for future public health projects."

The Ad Council, the country’s largest producer of public service advertising, has created and released its first in-house game called Toothsavers. The game is designed to encourage children to brush their teeth for at least two minutes, two times a day. The game was developed with the aid and input of Healthy Mouths, Healthy Lives.

Video games - particularly those that promote activities such as dancing (think Dance, Dance Revolution, or any Zumba game) can help women of all ages fight against incontinence, according to new research coming out of Canada and Switzerland. According to a study published in Neurology and Urodynamics conducted by Canadian and Swiss researchers, women suffering from urinary incontinence that added a regular regimen of dance exercises (using popular interactive video games) saw an improvement in pelvic floor muscle strength.

The AbleGamers Charity said today that it was able to raise over $100,000 for the first time in its history, in 2013. The charity said that these donations were made possible with the help of a lot of companies and community based fundraising effort. Community-based fundraisers such as Minethon and PAX-E, corporate donations from Paradox and IndieGala, dozens of individual streamers, and an increasing awareness in the gaming and disability communities have helped propel the charity to a new level coming into 2014, according to AbleGamers.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is using video games created by Akili Interactive Labs in a clinical trial with Alzheimer’s patients to see if it can help detect the early signs of the disease. Pfizer plans to conduct a clinical trial with 100 elderly participants with and without "the presence of amyloid in their brains, based on Positron Emission Tomography imaging," according to a company statement.

Recently the "Take This Project" was quietly relaunched as "Take This," along with a new website at www.takethis.org. Take This is a support group for gamers (though it doesn't specifically exclude those people who do not identify themselves as gamers), games journalists, game developers, and other industry professionals that suffer from depression, anxiety and other challenges associated with mental illness.

The AbleGamers Charity has achieved a core goal "milestone in its nine-year history" today by launching a grant program to provide people with disabilities crucial assistive technology year-round. Today the charity announced that the AbleGamers Grant Program will now be open year-round. People who have difficulties accessing video games through normal controllers can apply for a grant and will be evaluated on an individual need basis.

New research shows that on average kids need an extra 90 seconds to run a mile than kids did way back in 1975. Researchers blame increased body weight, a lack of exercise, and sedentary lifestyles that involve video games, mobile devices, and television. An analysis of studies on 250 million children from around the world finds that they don't run as fast or as far as their parents did when they were young.

Researchers at the University of Michigan Medical Center have been awarded a $4.5 million grant to study the effectiveness of video games and technology in creating more independence in young people suffering from spinal cord dysfunction and neuro-developmental disabilities.

While details on the study are thin, we do know that the $4.5 million grant comes from U.S. Department of Education's National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research and will be doled out over a five-year period.

A new treatment for patients who suffer from schizophrenia is being developed and field tested by University College London. According to Julian Leff, the University College London psychiatrist who developed the program, the treatment puts a face on the destructive and negative voices that schizophrenia patients sometimes hear and allows them the opportunity to confront that personality.

University of Saskatchewan computer science PhD student Kathrin Gerling is designing video games specifically for the benefit of senior citizens. Gerling, who loves video games, wants to combine her love for her hobby with her passion for her community by working with seniors in local nursing homes to make accessible games. Gerling was inspired to do this by a number of studies that showed that seniors who play games gain mental and physical benefits from them.