• A participant wearing motion-tracking equipment plays a computer game in a lab while sensors record hand movements.

    Gamifying Neuroscience: Michigan Tech Researchers Turn Motor Control Into Play

    Inside Michigan Tech's Aging, Cognition and Action Lab, space debris rains down on a screen as players scramble to deflect it before it crashes. Although the fast-paced chaos feels like a classic arcade, there's something much more ambitious behind the gameplay. The video game Space Trash is a neuroscience research tool created by faculty and students across three departments at Michigan Technological University — psychology and human factors, computer science, and kinesiology and integrative physiology (KIP) — along with the University's Health Research Institute. The game, one of several projects emerging from the work of members in Michigan Tech's Computer Science Education Research Group (CS-ERG), is transforming how researchers study motor control by turning data collection into something surprisingly engaging.

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