The Physicality of Emotions

Listening to WBUR's Here and Now promo a couple of weeks ago had me perking up at the mention of a story about Botox being an anti-depressant of sorts...

Seems that limiting the range of facial expressions that the forehead is able to produce means that there are corresponding changes of experienced (i.e., felt) emotions as well.

In other words, "freezing your face" makes you feel fine... ?

There is something to this  -- thinking of mirror neurons and the mind-body connection.

At the same time, I really want to see quantified experimental studies.

I will say that my "theory of mind" of Botoxed faces is that emotional empathy and creative thought seems to be limited....

But mainly, the body can influence the mind.

Read more here.

Kinesthetic Learner Video

Found this while researching something else. It's from About.com.

Note the blurb for field trips and museum visits.  ;)

It also brings back memories of teaching in an all-girls school!

Role Playing is Gaming with the Whole Body

Fighters with rapiers and daggers at a reenactment, 3 September 2007, 11:57, Crossed Blades, Jean, upload by Herrick, from Wikimedia Commons

Apparently, role-playing is undergoing a "renaissance."

Which is a wonderful play on words, as a lot of these stories are really medieval.

According to the WBUR story "You Be the Dragon Slayer":
The term interactive storytelling is used to describe all manner of games where both the audience and actors are part of the performance: live-action role-playing (LARPs); alternate reality games (ARGs) that often mix in technology or mobile devices; interactive theater; and everything in between, including old-fashioned role-playing games (RPGs) like D&D.

There is also the Society for Creative Anachronism.
(Sorta the anti-sport fencing.)

The connection here to museums is pretty clear, as there are a number of living history museums -- Old Sturbridge Village, Conner Prairie, and Plimoth Plantation to name a few -- that use role play as interpretation.

And there is a host of information coming out about gaming as educational, as well.
(Or not.  There is some debate.)

So is there some way we can combine these?

Higgins Armoury Museum already is.

Can we at indoor, non-armoury museums use this experience?

More Wii Research in Motion...!

This just in:

Wii use helps surgery students translate the 2-D to 3-D world of laparoscopy surgery.

A recent study by Dr. Gregorio Patrizi, a professor at the University of Rome Medical School, "found that the gamers performed significantly better than another group of residents who didn't undergo this grueling video game training" according to a February 28, 2013 NPR story "Nintendo Wii Helped Budding Surgeons Move To Head Of The Class."

Additionally, "Several earlier studies suggested that playing video games can boost laparoscopic skills, but those studies were largely based on surveys of surgeons' prior video gaming habits. Patrizi's study is one of the first randomized trials that had some surgeons undergo a structured game-playing routine and also maintained a separate control group.

"Patrizi and his team had surgical residents play three Wii games — tennis, ping pong and one that involved shooting balloons from an aircraft. As the researchers write in their article published online by PLOS ONE, they chose these games because they all required strong hand-eye coordination and three-dimensional visualization of a space."