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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.
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 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.
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.