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The creators of those games are working to prove that those gains persist and translate into real-life benefits. Over the past year, several small pilot studies have produced promising results for games designed to help children with autism, showing that they may improve a range of abilities - including balance, attention and gaze control. Some researchers, such as Townsend and Chukoskie, have taken the entrepreneurial route anyway, but others have sought partnerships with game developers or treat their explorations as a purely academic exercise. Federal Trade Commission slapped a $2 million fine on San Francisco, California-based Lumos Labs in 2016 for falsely advertising "that training with the Lumosity Program reduces cognitive impairment associated with health conditions." Another barrier is that the gaming industry works with bigger budgets and faster timelines than research labs typically do, making it difficult for the latter to be competitive. One reason not to is that some ‘serious games' - those designed for purposes other than mere entertainment, such as imparting practical skills - have drawn serious criticism, or worse. "If we are finding that kids with autism are especially drawn to technology," Mazurek says, "why not try to leverage that interest to design interventions?" And many common game features - including predefined ‘roles' and goals, and a repetitiveness between levels - seem to mesh well with autism traits, such as social difficulties and a preference for routine, says Micah Mazurek, associate professor of education at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The idea has obvious appeal: Boys with autism spend almost twice as much time playing video games as typical boys do. That step, Chukoskie says, filled her with a mix of unenthusiastic "eh" and dread-filled "ugh." Despite their discomfort, these two scientists are part of a growing cadre braving video-game development in search of novel therapies for autism. Last year, they launched a startup, BrainLeap Technologies, also based in San Diego. "I find myself doing a lot of computer science these days," Chukoskie says. The project has stretched the two neuroscientists in unfamiliar directions. But they finish each other's sentences when they talk about their quest: to develop video games that can help children with autism. Townsend is reserved, with dark-framed square glasses Chukoskie is a fast-talker with a California blond ponytail. The two women, a generation apart, are a study in contrasts. The lab's director, Jeanne Townsend, and associate director, Leanne Chukoskie, periodically poke their heads in to check on the progress. A half-dozen other lab members huddle around computer screens displaying none of the usual fare of charts or spreadsheets: Instead, they're hard at work making cartoon moles pop out of molehills, or fat spaceships careen toward the top of a computer screen. The first clue is a T-shirt one of the lab's young interns wears on this sunny day in April, featuring the RAD Lab's motto: "We play mind games." One of the newer recruits, 20-year-old Naseem Baramki-Azar, sports a "Super Mario Bros." shirt. But everything else about it is extraordinary. The lab itself is a nondescript warren of small beige rooms. The Research on Autism and Development (RAD) Laboratory is located in a Tetris-like maze of brown wooden buildings, not far from the main campus of the University of California, San Diego.