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How video games change the brain

5 october, 19:50

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One cannot deny the enormous popularity of video games as a form of entertainment. According to statistics, the total time spent playing games takes more than 3 billion hours per week for all players on Earth. Such a widespread activity couldn’t fail to attract the attention of scientists who are concerned about the question of the possible games’ impact on human intellect and behavior. In this article, we will try to analyze all the “pros and cons” of video games’ influence on people.

In the United States of America, over 150 million people can be considered “gamers” because they spend at least 3 hours a week in front of the computer screens playing videogames. The average player’s age is about 35 years, which is quite contrary to the stereotype that games are the prerogative of children. Moreover, players under 18 make up only 28 percent of the entire audience.

Such demand provides tremendous profits for development studios as the annual number of games sold is growing steadily. Therefore, in 2014, 21.4 billion copies were sold, while two years later, in 2016, this number reached 24.5 billion USD. The most popular games of the same year were actions and shootersGrand Theft Auto V, Battlefield 1, and Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. The general public may remember these genres by frequent accusations of cruelty towards people in the virtual world. It is worth noting that many scientists have looked for evidence of inducing a player’s cravings for violence with such games, but the connection between cruelty and games hasn’t been found.

Brain changes caused by video games

The information above doesn’t mean that games don’t affect a person at all. They do, but the modifications are just different.

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience recently published a report of a study made by a group of scientists who systematized and analyzed the results of 116 scientific papers on video games to determine possible changes in the players’ intelligence or behavior.

One of the article’s authors, Mark Palaus, argues that video games often provoke the public‘s anger or the favor due to their popularity. Everyone had their own opinion about such a high-profile topic that became the reason for this analytical work.

Analysis has shown that addiction to video games changes both behavior and the very structure of the human brain.

One of the player’s brain activities that change is attention. Most scientific works accept that people who spend enough time playing games develop stability of attention and the ability to keep it. Moreover, the players’ brain is slightly re-profiled for concentrating because the structural divisions of the brain responsible for it are activated in players much faster than others. Besides, games additionally develop visual memory and orientation in space.

Nevertheless, there are also glum effects; games can cause addiction akin to drugs.

People who are addicted to video games experience changes in the system of obtaining pleasure – they cause increased production of dopamine, known as the hormone of happiness – which, in turn, can create the addiction to things that cause its production.

It is worth noting that research on video games now has not yet reached a high enough level that could provide answers to all questions. Pilatus himself claims that scientists cannot say with 100% accuracy precisely which brain areas are affected by this kind of entertainment.

Are there any good uses for brain training games?

A group of scientists from the University of Florida claims that the so-called “intelligence development games” shouldn’t be taken seriously, because they don’t power-up the human brain as much as expected. 

Experts experimented by asking a group of volunteers to engage in such training for a certain period. The results showed that the volunteers’ abilities increased only in those specific tasks that were used in the game.

According to the assistant professor of psychology Will Booth, such products won’t change the quality of your mental activity significantly. Thanks to them, a person can learn how to solve a specific puzzle or problem, for example, fill out Sudoku, but such skills will not affect his ability in daily questions such as “Did I turn off the iron when I left the house?”

Booth also notes that older adults, who most often try to train their intelligence this way, should instead pay attention to light aerobic training. According to many scientists, physical activity chiefly improves brain performance better than mental activity.

Games can help improve the memory

However, not all researchers share the same opinion on “brain fitness” as these products are called. According to the scientific work of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, specific 3D video games for the aged people can help them improve their intellectual ability and correct possible age-related cognitive decline.

The experimental group aged from 60 to 85 y.o. spent 12 hours per month in the game and showed better results than the control group of people aged 20 who played the game for the first time. The participants in the experimental group also had improved sustained attention and memory.

These results are encouraging and suggest that even these relatively minor mental exercises can have a positive effect on the elderly minds.

A study by UCI University is also worth mentioning, it compared the effects on the brain of 2D and 3D games. The results showed that volunteers who played 3D games for two weeks for 30 minutes every day performed much better on the memory test than the group who played 2D games in the same mode.

Craig Stark, professor of neuroscience at the UCI, believes these results are connected with the increased complexity of 3D games. Unlike 2D games, three-dimensional ones involve spatial memory and orientation, which forces the brain to work much harder.

Experts also agree that among today’s popular video games, strategies are the most useful in terms of developing brain activity. According to some studies, they may even prevent dementia, senility, and Alzheimer’s disease to some extent.

Thus, video games have established themselves in the scientific community as a dual product that can both benefit and harm the player. It is possible to make another conclusion: that games are not yet fully understood, and researchers still have a lot of work to do in this direction.

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