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.

Researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA worked together to create an online gaming system that uses players to help diagnose malaria. In the game, players distinguish malaria-infected red blood cells from healthy red blood cells by viewing digital images obtained from microscopes.

Registration is open for the eighth annual Games for Health Conference, set to take place June 12-14 at the Hyatt Harboside Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. Organizers of the event have scheduled over 80 talks covering various topics related to merging video games and video game technologies with health and healthcare.

A small study conducted by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers found that online virtual communities can be a great way to train patients in the art of meditation and other mind and body-related techniques. Researchers used the virtual world of Second Life to conduct the research.

Epic Games has inked a long-term deal with Virtual Heroes, a division of Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA). The Virtual Heroes Division of Applied Research Associates creates collaborative interactive learning solutions for healthcare, federal systems, and corporate training markets. Virtual Heroes will use Unreal Engine technology to create interactive educational and training software to be used by various U.S. government departments and agencies.

Dan Porter, CEO of OMGPOP, will be a featured speaker at the 2012 Gamification Summit in San Francisco (June 19 – 21). Porter will talk about the techniques his company used to make their ultra popular Pictionary-like drawing game, Draw Something, so successful among users.

Phaedra Boinodiris, serious games program manager at IBM, writes a guest editorial on Forbes exploring the way that games can be used to energize and enhance other things besides research projects. The point of her editorial is that researchers have been helped greatly by games created to solve problems that take advantage of "collective intelligence," and global participation.

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.

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.

Parents with children suffering from amblyopia (referred to by some as "Lazy Eye") frequently have trouble with kids refusing to do vision correction exercises. Since these exercises are important to correcting this type of vision problem, parents need tools to make the activity more fun and engaging for youngsters. Correction of amblyopia typically involves some sort of repetitive coordinative exercise, such as navigating a maze on paper, drawing lines on paper, etc. The problem is that some kids find these activities to be tedious and unchallenging.

Want to look good naked?

Sure, we all do.  But would you believe that gamers might have an easier time of it then most?  It’s true.  The qualities that gamers apply to their hobby can easily be applied to bodybuilding.

When Brian Wang and Dick Talens (pictured.  Yeah, they're both the same guy) met at the University of Pennsylvania in 2004, neither one was physically fit but both found that what drove them to play games could also be applied to working out.

Red Hill Studios is using the motion technology found in the Xbox 360 and Wii consoles to help people with Parkinson's disease improve their gait and balance. Researchers have used the technology to help stroke victims in a similar fashion, so aiming the technology at other afflictions makes perfect sense. Red Hill is collaborating with the UCSF School of Nursing to develop the game.

A new video game called Focus Pocus hopes to help children suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) by having them control their game characters with their brain waves through 12 mini-games. The game incorporates a real-time electroencephalography (commonly referred to as EEG, or defined as "recording electrical activity along the scalp") headset to measure and improve impulse control, memory, attention and relaxation in children.

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).