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Video Games Found To Decrease Brain Activity
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.
And I guess this is true. I'd say a good amount of people play/played video games throughout their life, and I'm pretty sure they're not any dumber.
This comes off to me like the war on drugs: "Hey, people are enjoying themselves, we can't have that -- Get back to work"...
There are so many studies into the effects of video games on people - and none of them ever seem to come to the same conclusions:
Video games increase intelligence/Video games fry your brain.
Video games cause violence/Video games provide an outlet for violent urges.
Eventually, people are going to stop throwing money away doing these, clearly fruitless, studies.
Interesting point. An athlete's heart beats slower when it's gotten strong enough to pump blood without as much effort...perhaps cerebral functions are similar?
El riesgo vive siempre!
If anything, these games have made me MORE intelligent by finding different solutions to different problems.
Yes, but that's your subjective interpretation of what you think is happening inside your head, and not what it's actually doing.
I've played a variety of sims and RTS games, and I have just the opposite criticism of them.
RTS and sims become rote exercises, not challenging puzzles.
I would say, doesn't Starcraft simply turn into a race of who can execute the same plan faster? In fact, that is why Blizzard made WC3 so much faster and with more variables, so that people couldn't just do the same thing every time.
I would also say that good interactive fiction doesn't fall into this category because there are no images at all, required the creative capacity of one half of the brain and the abstract puzzle solving ability of the other. But you can only play an interactive fiction game once and get the same rush.
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After reading the article a couple of times trying to get past the poor Japanese->English translation I was left wondering if the actualt research makes any distinction between types of game. I would expect a game like Tetris would require very different brain activity from Quake, which in turn would be very different than that used to play EverQuest.
A category like "video games" is so broad it may be meaningless. It will be interesting to see what the research actually says, rather than the press release about it.
Sailing over the event horizon
Just found this story in the /. archive about a different Japanese research project stating that gaming stunts the brain.
-- Find the Truth...
> I've played a lot of strategy games in my life [...] these games have made me MORE intelligent by finding different solutions to different problems.
Since you've master those problems, here are some slightly more difficult problems for you to tackle:
1) Start a new company, grow it to the point where it employees hundreds of people, and go public for millions. Repeat.
2) Get laid. Get so good at it that you can walk into any social situation and walk out with someone you just met.
3) Find a person who perfectly compliments your own strengths and faults, marry them, create a strong and lasting marriage, have kids, and raise them to be excellent people.
you get the idea...
I find these games to be much more challenging and rewarding than most video games.
The training of video games does NOT necessarily translate to real life.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
This reminds me of a study where they measured the brain activity of people playing Tetris for the first time. It showed they used a significant proportion of their brain in playing the game.
After a while of continuous playing, they measured the brain again and found that only a small proportion was being used. They theoried that the brain optimised itself so that it took less brain power to play the game. (ie newer brain connections were created to solve the problem that is tetris)
I wonder what type of games he had his subjects playing. It seems to me, from personal experience, that playing MMORPGs are(or at least can be) a little more interactive than playing single player games. For example, I used to play Ultima Online, and I played with a group of the same people pretty regularly. We used VOIP to communicate with each other while playing. It seems to me that something like this would have an effect on your brain waves because you're interacting with other people while playing the game. It would be interesting if someone did a study about the difference between MMORPGs and single player games with this in mind.
Just my two cents
it was found that the longer people spent playing video games, the less activity they showed in the prefrontal region of their brains, which governs emotion and creativity.
I'm confused about this. I would think that less activity in the sections of the brain that govern emotions would lead to apathy, not to a shorter temper or anger.
The only issue I take is with the decrease in creativity. There are several games (MUCKS/MUDS come to mind) that encourage creativity in the form of building or roleplay. If you're not creative, there is no way you can pretend to be something that you're not.
Jumping around a bit more... the quote states that the decrease in activity was most readily seen in people that game a lot. I ask you this... wouldn't reading do the same thing to you? If came home and read all day, it would most likely affect your social skills and decrease your overall creativity as well.
The phrase "the prefrontal region of their brains, which governs emotion and creativity," is a little misleading. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is poorly understood, but one could just as accurately write that it governs problem solving and decision making, or that it governs voluntary eye movements and short-term memory.
There is certainly some evidence that activity in the PFC can go down with practice, but it's not exactly a rock solid reliable effect (perhaps a no-brainer?), and I don't think when it's been observed it's been associated with creativity, whatever that is.
dan
I think there's a very, very simple reason gaming decreases brain activity... ... Because games make you relax.
When people are tense and winded-up, the brain has a high activity (lots of alpha waves). When people wind down and start feeling relaxed, brain activity goes down.
Lots of people play exactly for this reason: it makes them relaxed.
People who game regularly quickly get into the relaxed mode when they start playing. Their brains are conditioned to relax once they hit the 'start' button.
People who never play computer games, find it hard and challenging to play, so their brains go on having a high activity.
I think we would get exactly the same results if we studied people who meditate regularly, and compared them to people who never meditate.
The people who meditate regularly would wind down quickly once they started, and their brain waves would calm down. The people meditating for the first time wouldn't experience any relaxing effect, so their brains would go on having a high activity.
Winding down brain activity is often seen as something desirable.
I believe that there is a significant role that videogames play in human relations. Not a good role though. I think that games don't really act as an outlet of pent up hostility, or develop any other skills other then being able to press the arrow keys rapidly. I know people (I realize that this is anecdotal for most, but it's true for me) who are addicted to videogames. Over the past few years they have developed fewer, and lost many friendships. And, they always resist the idea of limiting their time 'on the box'.
3 39 B-A694-1CC5-B4A8809EC588EEDF&catID=2
Addiction usually gets this bad reputation because the people who are addicted are defensive of what they do; either as an alcoholic, heavy drug user, gambler, or sex addict. Sure it might seem funny right now to make jokes of it but how many of you don't eat, bathe, go outside, sleep, or talk (using your mouth not fingers) for extended periods of time. The results on your body are more detrimental than you are willing to admit. Remember that a lot of alcoholic and heavy drug users hold down jobs too.
I've also recently read another article from SciAm that some people might want to read; the link is below. The article refers to TV but the results are similar to the video game study.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005
The exact same thing with:
- glass-of-red-wine-a-day;
- cannabis;
- cholesterol in eggs;
studies.what is next? Are they going to release a study proving water is bad for us? The point is that this study's end result was decided well before it was finished.
As someone who enjoys making music I have to strongly disagree with this statement. As for emotion I still cry as hard as I ever did at the end of The Joy Luck Club. And for the sake of humanity I hope that no one is putting any real merit in this study. I can safely say that video games have increased my creativity, well that and the excessive use of drugs.
Dick Laurent is dead.
The military must have been aware of this effect for some time. The use of video-game style simulators has greatly increased the percentage of soldiers who are willing to unthinkingly shoot to kill when under threat. In WWII, it was less than 50% in the most recent conflicts over 90%. I've heard military trainers say that videogame programmers are doing the job for them. They are making military training much easier as young recruits join the military without emotional "baggage" about killing.
The major problem I see with this is not demonstrating whether the video game playing is the cause or a symptom of the lack of concentration and social difficulties those in the study have. It seems just as or more likely that the people who were in the category that played the most may have always had social difficulty, lack of concentration and irritability (and these three conditions seem to exacerbate the others) and use video game playing as an escape or coping mechanism. It may be true that prolonged playing may worsen these conditions but it may also help people deal with them. This is particularly true with on-line games as people that are self-concious seem more comfortable socializing virtually for a multitude of reasons.
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