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Video Games Found To Decrease Brain Activity

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the tekken-combos-are-not-in-the-sats dept.

Richard C writes "A Japanese researcher, Akio Mori, from the Nihon University's College of Humanities and Sciences, claims to have found a link between the playing of video games and the balance of activity in the brain. It is also claimed that this effect can cause behavioural changes, such as lack of concentration, difficulty with social association, and short temper. These effects are also thought to be, to some extent, nonreversible." I was gonna say something witty and insightful here, but I can't think of anything. At least I can't make a windows machine stable enough to run Neverwinter or my brain would be toast.

3 of 694 comments (clear)

  1. This Paper Doesn't Have the Best Science by ZarfMouse · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is the second completely ludicrous science article I've read at this particular website in the last few weeks. It seems like they specialize in sensationalizing marginal psychological research results into weird moralistic conclusions. Cross reference this article about how fast food is turning japanese girls into sex maniacs:

    http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/0206/020619nymp hs .html

  2. For laymen by blakestah · · Score: 5, Informative

    These are EEG recordings. They placed scalp electrodes on the heads of these people while playing and not playing video games. The vast majority of these signals are close to 10 Hz, as was seen in the subjects.

    The differences occur in the higher frequency range. These ranges are associated with strenuous attentional focus, and were highest in normals, near zero in heavy game players.

    All this is restricted to prefrontal areas, which are the highest abstractest most creative planning areas.

    WAY blown out of proportion.

    Some background on brain waves from EEG

    Also, this is being presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference, so it is quite possible VERY preliminary.

  3. Re:Has it occured to anyone... by yali · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yeah, except that there are differences among gamers and non-gamers at rest, too. And it's not very adaptive for your brain to have no beta activity when you're supposed to be awake.

    As an aside, before everyone shouts "it's a correlational study blah blah" it's worth pointing out that this study combines a within-subjects experimental manipulation (compares brain activity at rest to activity during gaming) with a correlational variable (compares the effect of the experimental manipulation between gamers and non-gamers). The experimental effect of gaming is strongest in people who game regularly, but it's there for everybody except people who never game.