With recent strides in video game technology, health experts and psychologists are finding that the classic couch-potato pastime is quickly becoming a fitness movement.

Humana Inc., a national health consolidator, is currently looking to find connections between video games and improvement of coordination, endurance and physical health in adults.

Humana is hoping to find how video game technology is improving the quality of exercise as being more fun and interactive.

Ryan Snell, graduate student in chemical and biological engineering, said he is uncertain if Humana will find anything in relation to exercise.

“They

aren’t necessarily bad or good for anyone,” Snell said. “Unless one plays gaming systems enough that it hurts their grades or if it cuts into their time for actual physical activity.”

Douglas Gentile, professor of psychology, researches how video games affect human behavior.

Gentile stressed that video games have many effects on health, although most consider them as forms of entertainment.

He said negative effects on health can range from video-induced seizures to repetitive stress injuries.

Conversely, they also have been used to treat posttraumatic stress disorder, phobias and as part of physical therapy regimens.

“In fact, if they didn’t affect us, we wouldn’t play them – if they didn’t affect us, we’d call them boring. We want to be affected,” Gentile said.

A few video game phenomena that are linked to health are the Nintendo Wii and “Dance Dance Revolution.”

“Certainly there are studies suggesting that ‘DDR’ can be used as part of one’s workout routine,” Gentile said. “I think the Wii is likely to revolutionize gaming from a largely sedentary pursuit to a real ‘activity.'”

One example of gamers using the Wii as an exercise machine is Mickey Delorenzo, a Philadelphia native who performed an informal experiment.

In his “Wii Sports Experiment,” Delorenzo played the game “Wii Sports” for six weeks for 30 minutes a day, while never cutting back on his eating habits. By the end of the six weeks, he had gone from 181 pounds to 172 pounds – a nine-pound loss in just over a month.

Aisha Grieme, junior in aerospace engineering, is skeptical to the Wii’s or any other video game technology’s ability to provide a method of exercise.

“I don’t see how it will go over,” Grieme said, ” but I think it could have a shot, why not? Something new.”

Capitalizing on the results some gamers have found, Nintendo is coming out with a new game in early November to encourage physical health, titled “Wii Fit.” The game focuses on the stair stepper and its motion. The ideology of the game is to have the gamers perform the stair-stepping motion correctly, to earn points.

Dan Kenney, senior in kinesiology and personal trainer at Lied Recreation Athletic Center, said he sees a positive in interactive video games that get players off the couch.

“If that is the most effective method to get people to exercise, then I think it is a great idea,” Kenny said.