The Serious Play Conference announced today its line-up of game industry speakers taking part in its fourth annual event from Tuesday, July 22 to Thursday, July 24 at USC in Los Angeles. Speakers for this year's event include Noah Falstein, Chief Game Designer at Google; Trip Hawkins, Founder of Electronic Arts (and current CEO of Ifyoucan); and Peter Marx, Chief Innovation Technology Officer of the City of Los Angeles.

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."

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.

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.

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.

New York news station CBS 2 offers an interesting report on the use of video games (Games for Change as we like to call them) to teach children (and adults) about the importance of empathy. "That Dragon, Cancer" and "Papers, Please" are examples of games that deal with subject matter that puts ordinary people in seemingly insurmountable situations. By putting players in the shoes of someone in such situations, experts say that young people can learn to show a bit more empathy towards their fellow man.

Researchers from the University of B.C. are using a simple game to find new ways to treat symptoms of schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease. Miriam Spering, an assistant professor in the department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of B.C., led research to determine the disconnect between vision and the information the brain collects to solve problems.

UK-based charity Cancer Research UK has hired Dundee, Scotland-based game developer Guerilla Tea to build its first mobile phone game designed to help pinpoint new genetic causes of cancer and accelerate potential new cures. Cancer Research UK's scientists will work closely with Guerilla Tea to develop a game (working title "GeneGame") that will allow anyone with a smart phone to help analyze gene data. We assume that the game will be fun in some way to encourage more engagement. The game will launch in the UK later this year.

Games For Health Conference organizer Ben Sawyer let us know that the last day of the event is being live-streamed at this location. From that link you can catch the rest of the keynotes, talks, and other happenings for the remainder of the show. The page does require you to register for free.

The ninth annual Games For Health Conference kicks off today in Boston, Massachusetts and runs until June 28. The event focuses on how video games and videogame technologies can be used to promote health issues and be used in practical ways by medical professionals to treat illnesses, help patients with wellness, and be used to conduct research. Video games and gaming-like technologies are gaining popularity among doctors, schools, therapists and consumers who are playing games that are explicitly designed to help them lead healthier lives.

SPARX, a role-playing game that teaches young people how to manage and overcome depression, has found a publisher and distributor, according to Polygon. The game was designed by the University of Auckland and was unveiled as part of a clinical trial that was published in the British Medical Journal in 2012. That clinical trial found that playing the game was as effective as receiving one-on-one treatment with a trained mental health professional.

While the main job description of an orthodontist is to strengthen teeth, align bites and generally straighten teeth, one of the core issues they have had trouble addressing is oral hygiene among patients with braces. A new suite of tools called Mighty Brace hopes to help. The suite, which was created with the help of fellow orthodontists, combines an iOS app and a web presence with fun game-like activities, education and more.

Accessibility advisor AccessAble Games is looking to raise $40,000 via Start Some Good for a Spanish and English language game called My Carnival that helps children with cystic fibrosis maximize their pulmonary functions.

Organizers of the 2013 Games For Health Conference revealed two additional keynotes joining its slate of activities taking place in Boston, Ma. June 27 - 28. Palmer Luckey, Founder OculusVR will deliver a keynote address entitled "Healing and Health with Virtual Reality" which will explore the possible future uses of the company's virtual reality hardware in the medical field.

Researchers at McGill University and the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) have found that the popular puzzle game Tetris can be used to treat adult amblyopia, commonly known as "lazy eye." The method of treatment is drastically different because normally treatments involve patching one eye to make the uncovered eye work harder. Using Tetris, researchers found that both are used to work together to keep up with the fast-paced puzzle game.

In the latest issue of the science journal Nature two neuroscientists say that their colleagues should work with game developers to help create games that can be used to boost brain function and improve well-being. Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester and Richard J.

Konami announced that it has teamed up with UnitedHealthcare for a joint initiative that will use its popular dance rhythm game DanceDanceRevolution in schools to fight childhood obesity. The initiative will create a special version of DanceDanceRevolution called the DDR Classroom Edition.

BVM Capital announced that it has made a seed round investment in health and fitness gaming company Fitness Interactive Experience (FIX). FIX is dedicated to making fitness and health fun, accessible and socially connected using massively multiplayer online games.

Longtime readers will recognize Re-Mission.  It's that Games for Health game in which you play a microscopic nanobot who cruises the innards of fictional cancer patients in search of nasty old cancer cells to battle.  It was created by Hope Lab to be played by young cancer patients and studies have shown positive effects such as helping them adhere to medication.

What you may not realize is Re-Mission was released in 2005.  That's right.  This game almost eight-years-old and still in use today.

A British psychologist thinks that using video games can be a very effective tool in helping to treat Alzheimer's. Dr. John Harrison, a psychologist in the Department of Medicine at Imperial College, London shared his theories on the topic at the Games for Health Europe conference in Amsterdam this week, according to this Wall Street Journal report.

New research sponsored by the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (also known as CARDI) suggest that using video games can help the elderly improve their balance and avoid falls that are often devastating and debilitating.

A new research paper from University of Utah Professor Carol Bruggers comes to the conclusion that video games can be therapeutic to patients suffering from a variety of illnesses including cancer, diabetes, asthma, depression, autism and Parkinson's disease. The new research paper, "Patient-Empowerment Interactive Technologies," has been published within the pages of the September 19 issue of the Science Translational Medicine journal.

Update: We have added a brief statement from Professor Douglas Gentile below.

Next week Iowa State University psychology professor Douglas Gentile will be at the White House to discuss how video games can be used to enhance and improve education. He will lead the discussion on a special policy conference to be held at the White House on Wednesday, August 22. The policy conference will examine how games can be used effectively in the broadest sense to improve health, education, civic engagement and the environment.

Researchers at the University of Central Florida's Anxiety Disorders Clinic along with Atlanta-based company Virtually Better have created a virtual game world where children with social anxiety can practice to become more comfortable in social situations.

The National Institute for Health is offering a grant to small indie game developers who are willing to partner with clinical neuroscientists to create game software that advances neuropsychotherapy and technologies that can be used to improve cognitive processes. While the grant only funds phase I and II research, but the goal is to quickly develop and commercialize successful studies.

Ben Sawyer, the director of Games For Health, passed along a note to remind everyone that the 8th Annual Games for Health Conference in Boston, MA at the Hyatt Harboside Hotel is coming up fast. Online registration for the event that takes place June 12-14 closes at the end of the day on Friday, June 8. You can register for the event here until that time.

The Games for Health Project announced today that Jay Walker, CEO of TEDMED (another annual conference on the future of health and medicine) will deliver the closing keynote speech at the eighth annual Games for Health Conference in Boston, June 12-14. Of course, you already knew this if you listened to Episode 2 of the Super Podcast Action Committee, which featured a lengthy interview with Ben Sawyer from the Games for Health Project...

This week on the podcast we talk with Ben Sawyer, Project Director for Games for Health. Ben gives us a preview of what the event will offer next month and even talks a little bit about the impact of gamification on our privacy.

Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight delve into the fine print of Microsoft's recently announced $99 Xbox 360 and detail why it's not really a good deal for anyone. They also discuss the sorry state of the big three console makers.

While children play at the Shirley G. Moore Laboratory School their every move is being recorded by five Kinect motion sensors tucked away in the corners of the room. No, this isn't some clever new security system or some Orwellian plot by school administrators; the Microsoft motion sensing game technology for Xbox 360 and PC is being used to detect autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in young children.