"Is this the reason for our increasing desire to play? And, above all, for the growing interest in digital games? Because, in this digital age, nobody wants to admit that he or she is getting old - or worse yet, already is old? Or perhaps we simply want to reawaken the child inside all of us. The fact is that our possibilities for play have never been as great and varied as they are today."

"This book is about the revolutionary discovery that the human brain can change itself, as told through the stories of the scientists, doctors, and patients who have together brought about these astonishing transformations. Without operations or medications, they have made use of the brain's hitherto unknown ability to change. Some were patients who had what were thought to be incurable brain problems; others were people without specific problems who simply wanted to improve the functioning of their brains or preserve them as they aged."

"During the past 10 years, the field of multimedia learning emerged as a coherent discipline with an accumulated research base that has never been synthesized and organized in a handbook. The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning constitutes the world's first handbook devoted to comprehensive coverage of research and theory in the field of multimedia learning. Multimedia learning is defined as learning from words (e.g., spoken or printed text) and pictures (e.g. illustrations, photos, maps, graphs, animation, or video). The focus of this handbook is on how people learn from words and pictures in computer-based environments. Multimedia environments include online instructional presentations, interactive lessons, e-courses, simulation games, virtual reality, and computer-supported in-class presentations. The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning seeks to establish what works (i.e., to determine which features of a multimedia lesson affect learning), and to consider when and where it works (i.e., to explore the implications of research for practice)."