New data from research firm Nielsen reveals that around 56 percent of American households owned an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 or a Wii in 2011. They also reported that around 45 percent of those consoles were "constantly connected" to the internet to serve as entertainment hubs in living rooms. This is probably due to their next figure - an increase in streaming content over consoles since 2010. That can probably be laid at the feet of services like Netflix, Hulu, and Crackle - though the research firm did not name those specific services in its data.

According to a new study conducted by the Institute for Special Populations Research in New York, some types of games are more addictive than others and have the potential to create "problem gaming" habits in a small percentage of gamers. While the mental health community is not quite ready to make the leap of faith it takes to proclaim that video game addiction is a real mental disorder like gambling and drug addiction, studies like this one are certainly trying to establish causation.

Oh, you wacky scientists.  What are you up to now?

Well, Informatics research scientists at the University of California, Irvine have built an Outrun arcade cabinet that can be driven on the road.  For real.

A new article written by Iowa State University professor of psychology Douglas Gentile posits that playing social games may cause players to be more helpful in real-life social situations. Social games require the help of friends - and in turn for the player to be helpful to his or her friends. In an article published in the latest issue of the Nature Reviews/Neuroscience journal, Gentile uses several studies to toy with the idea that social games might inspire players to be helpful to others in real-life.

A new study finds that cheating in online games and in social circles is infectious; meaning that if you play with cheaters chances are you yourself will inevitably cheat too. A new research paper written by Jeremy Blackburn at the University of South Florida in Tampa (with the help of some friends) takes a closer look at cheaters in the Steam Community. Researchers collected information about more than 12 million gamers connected to Steam, and found that around 700,000 accounts have been flagged as cheaters.

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) is taking a bit of heat this week for saying that a $113,277 grant given to Rochester's International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) is wasteful spending. He named it as one of a hundred "unnecessary, duplicative and low-priority projects" that the federal government spent money on in 2011. He released his annual report on wasteful spending in this report.

Games designed specifically to help improve mental fitness and to help the disabled and mental health sufferers to practice life skills are being explored by the Melbourne-based Young and Well Co-operative Research Centre.

A new report from the Swedish Media Council comes to the conclusion that, while violent games may make the children that play them more aggressive, there's no conclusive evidence that "the games themselves cause kids' aggressive behavior." The Media Council is a Swedish government agency whose mission statement is to "reduce the risk of harmful media influences among minors and to empower minors as conscious media users."

A teen from Cupertino, California has won a $100,000 science prize for research on cancer stem cells and two teens from Oak Ridge, Tennessee won the top team honor for using a video game to conduct research on the science of walking to benefit amputees who rely on prosthetics. The 17-year-old, Angela Zhang, won the top honors at the Siemens Foundation’s annual high school science competition. The top team prize went to two students from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for their research using gaming technology to analyze motion while walking.

New data from Pew Research Center finds that young adults are using the Internet as a distraction - a distinction television use to have among that particular age group. A majority of young American adults are using the Internet for "fun" and to "kill time," according to a new report by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. But television isn't the only victim according to the data - video game console time is also being affected by Internet use, according to the data.

According to a press release issued this morning by the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), new research shows that violent video games alter the brain functions in young men. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to analyze the long-term effects of violent video game play on the brain, researchers found that changes in brain regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control in young adult men occur after one week of game play. The results of this study were presented at the annual meeting of the RSNA.

While those who don't know anything at all about video games are quick to use them as an excuse for many of society’s ills (crime, violence, obesity, attention deficit and a myriad of psychological disorders), now everyone thinks they are bad. In fact a growing number of academics see the value in video games as teaching aids. For example, a Yale professor is trying to use them to teach sex education.

Researchers at the Charité University Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy in Berlin, Germany, found that gamers who play "frequently" have greater left striatal gray matter volume compared with those that are considered to be moderate gamers. Researchers say that these findings show the importance of "striatal volume and activity in shaping preference of skills for video gaming."

The Huffington Post serves up a video of Dr. Lawrence Kutner discussing what he calls the myths about violent video games and his research on the links between video game violence and youth violence.

Kutner is nationally recognized clinical psychologist who trained at the Mayo Clinic and teaches at Harvard Medical school, where he's co-founder and co-director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. He's also the president of Health Communication Consultants, Inc.

According to new research from Strategy Analytics, the Xbox 360 and PS3 are the most popular devices for online entertainment viewing. While the PC remains the top device for online viewing overall, transferring this experience to a big screen is becoming increasingly popular and is a key driver of consumption via the Internet.

Girls and boys who play video games are more creative, according to new research conducted at the Michigan State University. And, according to researchers, it doesn't matter whether these video games are violent in nature. Both boys and girls who play video games tend to be more creative, regardless of whether the games are violent or nonviolent, according to new research by Michigan State University scholars.

If you have ever wondered why you sometimes lose track of time when playing a particularly good video game, new research may have the answer. New research suggests it may be related to a theory called "time perspective." Time perspective assumes the existence of three "temporal frames" in the human brain - past, present, and future. This theory is thoroughly explained in Psych Central:

New research from the University of Queensland suggests that playing violent video games leads to players seeing themselves and their opponents as "lacking core human qualities" such as warmth, open-mindedness, and intelligence. The research, conducted by Dr. Brock Bastian from UQ's School of Psychology, was recently published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

A new study conducted by academics from two German universities says that "aggressive children" ages 8 - 12 years-old have a preference for violent video games.

University of Texas at Arlington economics associate professor Michael Ward will explain his findings about violence and video game usage in detail at 3 p.m. Friday (Oct. 21) in Business Building Room 609 as part of the Kuemmerlein Workshop Series at the university. Ward worked with A. Scott Cunningham of Baylor University and Benjamin Engelstatter of the Center for European Economic Research’s Information and Communication Technologies Research Group to study the effects of playing video games as it relates to violent crimes.

According to a new market survey from analyst firm EEDAR, video game console owners are purchasing more downloadable content than ever before. EER's market survey finds that more than 51 percent of Xbox 360 and PS3 owners have purchased downloadable content (DLC), expansion packs, full games or indie games via the internet in the past 12 months. That number is up from 40 percent in 2010 and 34 percent in 2009.

A new study published in the medical journal Pediatrics suggests that profanity in the media such as television and video games can cause aggressive behavior in middle school students. Researchers at Brigham Young University gathered information from 223 middle school students in the Midwest to come to the conclusion that profanity can lead to aggressive behavior.

Violent games are "emotionally desensitizing" according to new research from the University of Bonn (Bonn, Germany). Researchers from the University found that brain activity patterns in "heavy" game players differed from those of non-gamers. The study's results have been published in the scientific journal Biological Psychology.

Researchers - psychologists, epileptologists and neurologists - from the University of Bonn studied the effect of first-person game images and other "emotionally charged" photos on the brain activity of heavy gamers.

The Interactive Games & Entertainment Association has released a new report this morning that provides some interesting demographics on just who is playing video games in Australia. The Digital Australia 2012 report found that nine out of ten Australian households own some sort of device for playing games, and nearly one in five gamers play social network games. In households that play computer or video games, 43 percent said that they use a mobile phone and 13 percent use a tablet computer device to play games. Another 13 percent play video games on a handheld device.

Children in the United States between the ages of 2 and 17 are playing video games, according to a new study released by research firm NPD Group. According to the NPD's new study around 91 percent of kids between the ages of 2 and 17 (that's roughly 64 million people) are playing video games. That number represents a nine percent increase compared to data collected for 2009. NPD says that growth has been across the entire market, but the biggest gains come from children between the ages  2 and 5, up 17 percentage points since 2009.

New research published online in the Journal of Critical Care from Johns Hopkins researchers claims that video games are a good supplement to traditional physical therapy for patients in intensive care units (ICU).

Video game developer Brain Plasticity is seeking approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a cognitive training game because it wants to market the game as a therapeutic drug. The company has been working on a game to help people who suffer from schizophrenia improve attention and memory deficits that are often associated with the disorder. The company plans to conduct a study with 150 participants at 15 sites across the country. Participants will play the game for one hour, five times a week over a period of six months.

New research from Tel Aviv University suggests that playing video games can reduce stress across a spectrum of the population. A study conducted by Professor David Eilam and graduate student Hila Keren of TAU's Department of Zoology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences found that repetitive behavior (like video games - which, for the record the study does not focus on or mention) and ritualistic behavior in particular in both humans and animals induces calm and helps manage stress caused by unpredictability and uncontrollability.

The UK news publications The Daily Mail and Metro are taking one on the chin for erroneously reporting on a study we highlighted yesterday that referred to "Games Transfer Phenomena," or a residual effect that some gamers claim to experience where they think about gaming elements in the real world. Researchers in the UK responsible for the study gave both publications open access to the research and gave it to them early, but one of the professors in charge noted that all they were looking for were the negative aspects of it.

Here's one of the oddest research studies I have come across in a long time involving gamers. According to research from Nottingham Trent University (UK) and Stockholm University (Sweden) some gamers are so immersed in the games they play that when they stop they transfer their experiences into the real world. Researchers are calling this odd phenomenon "Game Transfer Phenomena," or "GTP."