The ultimate excuse for video games

Efforts to maintain and improve brain fitness have now reached your Xbox (or Wii or whatever is next) and given people the ultimate excuse for playing computer games. The games will let you keep an eye on your Brain Age while do exercises to improve your flexibility and strength. Seed reports on this potential growth industry:

Merzenich has big plans for PositScience. He wants to launch programs that target the visual cortex, working memory, and executive control. With those goals in mind, he has partnered with the Mayo Clinic to conduct an expansive trial study. Moreover, Merzenich has begun studying the positive effects of PositScience on schizophrenic patients. The results so far have been "extremely encouraging": "If we got these same improvements with a pill," Merzenich says, "we'd be counting the money already. We'd have billions in sales. But this isn't a pill—it's much better than that."

Still, a sudden death overtime in Madden NFL '07 is not an excused absence.