Japanese Researcher Finds Gaming Stunts Brain

Bill Gates writes: "This story at the Guardian describes research done in Japan showing that playing video games in youth prevents development of the front lobe, leading to violent behavior." Turns out what at first appears to be arbitrary, mind-numbing violence may turn out to be just that. It seems this study might have returned different results, though, if it looked at the effects of video games which require lots of calculation instead.

Comments

Comparisons?

[whm]

Using the most sophisticated technology available, the level of brain activity was measured in hundreds of teenagers playing a Nintendo game and compared to the brain scans of other students doing a simple, repetitive arithmetical exercise. To the surprise of brain-mapping expert Professor Ryuta Kawashima and his team at Tohoku University in Japan, it was found that the computer game only stimulated activity in the parts of the brain associated with vision and movement.

In contrast, arithmetic stimulated brain activity in both the left and right hemispheres of the frontal lobe - the area of the brain most associated with learning, memory and emotion.


Ok, sounds fair enough. But what about compared to something like -television- that certainly many more children do for many more hours in their youth.

From the article, it sounds like they are saying video games prevent proper development, they don't cause damage. That would imply that something like TV would certainly do as much and more prevention than video games.

And television isn't mentioned at all, nor anything else. There are lots of things kids can do that don't involve any thinking...I don't know many kids that sit down and do math all day :)

Illogical conclusion

[Ziktar]

What a great comparison they did... Let's compare playing a video game to "an exercise called the Kraepelin test, which involves adding single-digit numbers continuously for 30 minutes." Yeah, I'm sure that continuously adding numbers is quite a lot of fun for the researchers, but something tells me that the average kid won't think that this is a good time...

Seriously, this article practices once of the major fallacies of statistics. They do a basic study of some Nintendo video game (they don't mention which one) versus continuously adding numbers or reading aloud. Then they draw the conclusion that:

"But the other thing is to ask them to play outside with other children and interact and to communicate with others as much as possible. This is how they will develop, retain their creativity and become good people."

Excuse me?!? The study had absolutely nothing to do with playing outside with other children. There's a chance that doing just that would be even worse for the childrens' frontal lobes. We don't know because the study said nothing about other behaviors, just playing a game & doing math.

If you ask me, this is nothing but inflammatory nonsense designed to generate a lot of press time and give people a good excuse to take away our fun.

junk science

[mj6798]

There is no basis to conclude from that data that playing video games interferes with frontal lobe development. All sorts of activities we engage in stimulate only a small part of the brain, and yet they don't cause problems. Even if it were conclusively demonstrated that the frontal lobes in people who play video games are less developed, whether there is causation and which way it goes would be very hard to decide (maybe people like playing video games in preference to social interaction because that's the way their brains are wired).

And any of this assumes that the study was done correctly. In fact, there are serious questions about normalization: very high activity in the visual and motor areas might simply have caused "normal" frontal lobe activity to be normalized away.

Between playing video games and watching television, I think kids are a lot better off playing video games.

Re:Another easy explanation

[reverius]

I can certainly say that violence would increase in my school if violent video games were ever banned.

I know kids with no hope of a social life, or even the smallest amount of self-esteem, whose entire lives are centered around being good at video games.

Take away the video games, and you're pulling the pin out of a grenade.

And to complete the well-worn formula...

[Giant Hairy Spider]

Where do you think raves came from?

Agreed, Research Totally Invalid.

[etymxris]

The researcher says that playing video games stimulates vision and motion centers of the mind. He then compares this to doing arithmetic exercises, which stimulates many portions of the brain, frontal lobe included. But then at the end of the article, he says that parents should spend more time playing outside with their children. This is a total non-sequitor! Playing outside is probably no better to the brain than playing video games. I would imagine that playing outside stimulates--guess what--vision and motion centers of the brain, exactly the same as was found for playing video games.

Comparing to math is totally invalid. Most children do very little math, trying to avoid it as much as possible. It only exercises the whole mind because the mental exercise is novel. If doing simple arithmetic exercises made us better people mentally, then every cashier, who does tons of arithmetic exercises on the brain every day, should be a better person (mentally) than anyone else. The only other person who does more math (maybe not even) is a math professor.

Re:Okay, sure

[defile]

In places like Russia, they have practically zero cases of attention deficit disorder

Interesting. You use the fact that ADD doesn't exist outside of the US as proof of US culture turning kids into mindless zombies (Which I don't necessarily disagree with).

I use this fact as proof that ADD is bullshit.

Case study: My girlfriend was diagnosed with ADD and prescribed Ritalin because she had bad grades. As someone very close to her, I knew very well why she was getting bad grades. School was frankly, very boring. And not only was it boring, but she didn't care. The idea of doing menial drudge work instead of enjoying life wasn't very appealing.

Of course, you say "Well, all kids should love learning. If she finds it boring, she must have ADD!" Guess what? Public schools really are boring! Instead of say, making schools better, we're just prescribing more drugs.

I'm absolutely amazed by what I hear about kids learning in European public schools. If you ask most kids why they put up with such bullshit in the US, they say "Well, yeah, it's totally stupid. But I won't get into a good college if I don't go with it! And then where will I be?!"

We had a coworker come in from the UK (H1B Visa) who was a big South Park fan. We were discussing the episode where all of the kids started coming down with ADD. I mentioned that it was a big problem here. That shocked him. He thought that South Park had made ADD up. He had never heard of ADD until he visited the USA.

"For every kid who really needs Ritalin, you prescribe it to 500,000 kids who don't" -- Chef, South Park

As an aside, I'm suprised the pro-censorship movement is sticking to banning sex and smut and video games. Why don't they promise to eradicate NSYNC and Brittany Spears instead? If they pitched it the right way, I probably wouldn't even realize that I was supporting censorship. :)

Re:Okay, sure

[defile]

My girlfriend's point of view:

"Well, see, this is how a Russian mother treats a child who might have ADD. She takes the skin on her their thigh, and then she twists it. Several times. And then the kids don't have ADD anymore. Simple and very effective."

Child abuse is a terrible thing, but a small controlled application of pain can be a great problem solver.

Re:Gasp of surprise (not)

[dboyles]

Something Awful had a tidbit a couple of days ago about the crack baby scare for a new generation. One such example was the "Counter-Strike baby.":

"The restaurants of the future will be forced to feature illegible menus that cater to these Counter-Strike babies, adversely effecting the rest of us:

WTF!!! TEH CAMPIN LAMA RESTARANT/ MEUNU: DINNAR: WTF!!!

HAMBuRGR..... $5
COKA_COLA....2
FRENCH FIRES.... #1.50!!!!!!!!!!!

NO SHIT NO SHOES NO SERVAICE ! WTF!!! U FUKER/// IF U DONT LIKE OUR RULEZ U CAN GO SUK AN ASS U FAG
15 PRECENT GRADUTIAN INCLUDED!! WTF1111!!!!A"

In all seriousness, I don't think playing video games makes you stupid or anti-social. Playing video games excessively might do (probably does) these things. But doing most anything excessively often has such negative consequences. Studying physics 12 hours a day will make you stupid and anti-social. Sure, you'll know all about physics, but you're missing that key phrase "well-rounded."