Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2 (Konami, out Tuesday, $39.99, for Sony PlayStation 2) Dance fanatics have bought more than 2.5 million DDR games since 2001. This and another new edition, Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix (Nintendo, for GameCube, Oct. 24, $50) have "workout" modes that measure the amount of calories you burn while dancing to the music. YourselfFitness (www.getmaya.com, out now, $34.99, for Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, Windows PCs) This personal fitness trainer guides you through a personalized program to help you meet goals; even plans meals for you. EyeToy: Kinetic (Sony, Nov. 8, $49.99, for PlayStation 2; EyeToy camera included) Designed with Nike's Motion Works research lab, this program will design a 12-week fitness program for you — it has a virtual trainer who tutors — or you can customize aerobic workouts, yoga sessions and meditation. Trauma Center: Under the Knife (Atlus, Oct. 4, $29.99, for Nintendo DS handheld system) You are the doctor in this ER-styled game. Use the handheld system's stylus like a scalpel to perform increasingly difficult operations.

Video-game-based neurofeedback may be "an interesting and possibly promising treatment, but there's still not enough research to recommend it as a first-line treatment" for children with ADD, says Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Schneider Children's Hospital in New Hyde Park, N.Y. "Families are often loath to consider medication but ... it's the single most proven treatment." (Related item: Can kids' brains be trained to pay attention?)
Janet Herlihey admits she was skeptical at first. She had not allowed video games in the home because "they didn't seem like a good match for my family," which also includes Peter, 8, and Beth, 6. "When they first sat down to play, they were physically rocking the entire chair," she says. "Now, they sit calmly and their eyes are doing all the tracking."
Despite receiving standard neurofeedback treatment for ADD in the past, Michael still had memory problems that affected his schoolwork and left him frustrated. In successfully playing video games, Michael has to calmly focus on the task at hand, says his mother. After nearly a year of game-based therapy, he has learned to transfer the game-playing focus skills to school and even soccer, where he's become a prolific scorer, she says.
In Paul's case, he has regained his love of reading, something that had become an activity that he could not sit still and focus on, says Janet Herlihey.
Video games as therapy — just one example of the changing attitude that some in the health care and medical industries have toward video games, an often-criticized pastime.
Training and treatment, too
Looking past the violence and adult content in games such as Grand Theft Auto, a growing number of researchers have begun to embrace the medium's high-quality 3-D environments and simulation programs.
There were nearly 40 projects in various stages of development on display at last week's Games for Health Conference in Baltimore, says the group's co-director Ben Sawyer. Games for Health is an offshoot of The Serious Games Initiative (www.seriousgames.org), which seeks to push the evolution of games technology to aid in problem solving, public policy and social issues.
Some of the highlighted projects and potential benefits:
•Patient treatment. The U.S. Navy is testing Sony's Eye Toy, a camera that connects to the PS2 and transfers the person's image onto a TV screen, along with the interactive dance mats used for the game Dance Dance Revolution, says the project's principal investigator, Mark Wiederhold of the Virtual Reality Medical Center in San Diego. The idea is to create special programs to help rehabilitate soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
•Training. U.K.-based Blitz Games is developing Interactive Trauma Trainer, a PC game-style simulation program to help prepare battlefield surgeons for decision-making and treatment in combat.
Another program being tested, New Dawn Estates, a role-playing simulation developed by pullUin Software of Vermillion, S.D., helps certified nursing assistants learn nursing-home treatment protocols.
•Prevention and education. The Federation of American Scientists and Brown University have created Immune Attack, a 3-D game about the immune system to help high school and college students better understand the complex subject.
"All of these things require more research and they are going to lead us in a lot of different ways. In three years, we'll know more," Sawyer says.

Says Greco: "The next thrust is creating attention in the gaming world to recognize that people are looking for something more in video games."