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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.
Huh?
This doesn't bode well for professional game testers. They oughta get some kind of hazard pay for their weakening intellect.
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Haven't there been just as many studies showing the exact *opposite*? I guess it must mean that it does nothing at all in the end, since half of the reaearch shows one way, and half the other. I think it all depends on the agenda the researchs/financers start out to prove...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
that maybe the reason that it decreases brain activity is because the brain has gotten more efficient at doing tasks?
The first thing that I would like to know is which games were played? I would expect there to be a large difference in brain wave patterns between Pong and an RTS or Strategy game, which would require strategic thinking, game theory, and multitasking. Also, it seems as if the researcher may have had a negative attitude towards video games prior to the study.
"A good conspiracy is an unprovable one." -Conspiracy Theory
i have spent more hours of my life playing doom and then civilization then i care to think about but... umm... what was i writing about?
why do i even talk to you people anyway! what's the point! stop bothering me dammit! GO AWAY!
umm... err...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Well hell I could have told you that. I play them to veg out, not deal with people, and enjoy loosing my temper at something I can take it out on. I also find that I become "SuperNeck" while I play, and the Uberness follows me into the hours after I stop playing. I was wondering why when I was running around with my grill lighter, with the flame at max screaming "MAHALITO!" people looked at me funny.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
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.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
20 console systems and 100 games... for 'research': $9000
3 years salary for 10 scientists: $1,800,000
Miscellaneou research costs: $400,000
Discovering that sitting in a lab all day playing video games just might result in social issues?
Priceless.
There are some things money can't buy... For everything else; there's research grants.
You must be kidding. In fact, you just reminded me of a hilarious comic strip from the far side. I thought I'd share it with the group. Hell, with thinking like that, who needs to spend the thousands I'm spending on college, I could spend $40 on a video game!
They're just playing the wrong games. I have to use my brainpower and creativity to play my favorite game: KarmaQuest on Slashdot. If I just sit back don't think and post any microsoft rules old mpaa rocks crap lunix suxxx0rz, then I lose points.
On the other hand, if I spend some time and get creative and construct a witty, self-referential post that admits that it's there to whore karma, then I can win a lot of points.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Video games rot your brain, and bleaching hair causes brain damage. Since today's kids love both of these, they may be so out of it by age forty that they need to be put in nursing homes!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
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
Sure, games might improve your situational analysis skills and such, to a degree, but once you hit something that wasn't covered in the game, you're toast.
ie, a social situation. People don't have pretty menus and interfaces, and you're not given a choice of three things to say.
People who constantly socialize and interact with others are much lighter on their verbal feet than people who play games all day long. Take your l33t interacting skills into a crowded (real life) room and see how well typing "t A/S/L??? " works.
Games aid your decision making skills withing a certain ruleset. They don't hone your decision making skills outside of that game. For example, if you were attacked by a gun-wielding maniac, based on your gaming, you should run around till you find a gun bigger than his, charge him head on, and pump a round of flak into his gut, and promptly find a health pack to heal your flesh wound. Somehow, I don't think that would work too well.
Not you, but some other guy mentioned Civilization. Playing Civilization makes you as qualified to make decisions that would affect the economy as a goldfish is qualified to be an ocean predator.
Games don't give you real-life skills or abilities - they give you a source of escape and relaxation.
IMO, this rates fairly high on the Duh-O-Meter.
Just found this story in the /. archive about a different Japanese research project stating that gaming stunts the brain.
-- Find the Truth...
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:
p hs .html
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/waiwai/0206/020619nym
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.
> 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
You're not from America, are you?
He divided the brain activity of participants into four categories -- naming the activity normal, visual, half-videogame, and videogame.
He probably should have made more groups such as violent videogames, strategy videogames, etc. No where in the article did I see any reference to analyzing the genre of videogame on the subject's brainwaves. It would be interesting to see how/if the brainwave patterns changed when playing Duke Nukem IV: Death To Everyone, WWF Smackdown Vol. 7: The Women, and Pikachu's Happy Hopscotch. If there was no difference, then perhaps the results really don't mean shit.
And the article never did say what was the "visual" group.
GMD
watch this
Exactly.
There are two many medical studies that draw direct conclusions from data when often the consistant occurrance of two effects together are caused by something completely different that the researcher never thought about.
For instance, people who drink one glass of wine a day have fewer heart attacks. But, maybe the real reason is that most of those wine drinkers they STUDIED make more money, take more vitamins, and generally watch their health better. Few doctors will mention that.
They also still don't know why EXACTLY Japanese women, before they move to America, have a lower rate of breast cancer than native Americans, and the descendants of those Japanese women also have a rate of breast cancer similar to other Americans (because they are native Americans at that point). Why? Because their Japanese? Because they eat more fish and less red meat than we do?
Also, with a controversial study like this, you always have to ask, "How many people DID you study and for how many years?". That important little fact seems to be absent from this article -- I've seen too many supposedly legitimate studies over the past 10-15 years that study 50 people over 2 years and call that "conclusive research" on humans. I hate to tell any scientists out there this, but accurate human research takes DECADES on a reasonable number of people (i.e. NOT 50).
When do scientists cross the line between science and tabloid news? I think more scientists need to learn...
I think a Simpsons quote would be appropriate here:
"Damn TV. It's ruined my ability to remember what I'm just like it's..... uh.....(turn on TV to Itchy and Scratchy)... Ha ha ha ha ha"!
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Tis studie is totel BS. Prety soone thay'll sey thet reeding Slahdot causis pour speling.
If you're smart enough to file a lawsuit, you'll lose it.
I completely agree. This is another "study" or "survey" that looks at a cause and effect yet does not make any strong argument whatsoever as to which is the cause and which is the effect:
.hmm. . . .
"Many of the people in this group told researchers that they got angry easily, couldn't concentrate, and had trouble associating with friends."
Is it that because they play video games that they get angry, can't concentrate and have no friends or is it that they have no friends because they get angry and lack entertaining creativity so thus they play video games for some form of entertainment.
Another one of my favorites in this same category is studies that 'show' that people who live together before marriage tend to get divorced at a higher rate. What is the cause and what is the effect? Is it that because people have lived together before marriage that causes them to later get divorced (aka a direct cause of the divorce) or is it *perhaps* they lived with someone because they could not find anyone else and *did not* want to get married but later said, "what the hell" and got married anyway (aka simply a symptom and by no means a cause of the divorce).
Studies and reports like this that draw a conclusion without a strong argument with evidence are utter horeshit and the people who funded them should be able to sue for gross negligence. If one does not have the facts for a conclusive argument *do not make one*. In this case it should have simply stated, "there is a correlation between video game playing and people who are not creative, have no friends and are angry." It should not have even been implied that video games cause people to become angry, lose their creativity and lose all their friends.
Now for me, I am angry but also creative and I have a few friends but yet I do not play video games. . .
I also wonder if there is some correlation between the intensity and/or longevity of the effects and age (I would expect that the effects are more pronounced and long-lasting in kids than adults, for instance).
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Games don't give you real-life skills or abilities - they give you a source of escape and relaxation
You make a valid point about how specific gaming skills rarely cross over into real life. But the thing about games, and the reason we play them at all, is that they excercise certain skills in a unique and valuable way. For example, less than a year ago my 5-year-old nephew was doing about normal in terms of hand/eye coordination. Then his parents got a gamecube, and he learned to play Simpsons Road Rage. Not long after, his drawing skills improved a LOT. Before, he was drawing people made of circles and lines, and now he makes highly detailed pictures of soldiers with armor and decorative swords, etc. Also, his confidence is way up, due to the fact that he can beat his dad at the game once in a while (without letting him win, I might add). This is exactly the same reason we play games like baseball, air hockey, or chess. Not because they have a direct correlation to real-life activities, but because it feels good to sharpen different skills, useful or not.
That said, while playing Tetris might improve some sort of shape-visualization part of the brain, playing EverQuest likely exercises nothing more than whichever finger you use to press "attack" with. Video games are like TV shows. Some improve you somehow and some are mindless entertainment (which isn't necessarily worthless). The author of the study would've done better to compare how different games affect your brain, rather than try to make a sweeping generalization about a huge and complex genre.
c-hack.com |
This seems to be another case where there may be a strong correlation but debatable causation. If you have bad social skills you are far more likely to engage in introverted hobies, included amongst those is playing video games.
Also, I'd be very curious to see a study showing the relation between different kinds of games and brain activity. Does playing a stategic game alter the effects versus a shoot 'em up kind of game. Seems to me that a puzzle solving game is probably going to have a different effect than say pac man.
Finally, I'm curious as to what his conclusions are actually saying. I'm not a neurologist so I can't comment with any real expertise, but I've done a little research about brain waves, mental states, etc. I had always been under the impression that having a brain heavily in alpha waves was good. This is, as I understand it, the state one is supposed to be in when meditating. So is this necessarily a bad thing?
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Since you've master those problems, here are some slightly more difficult problems for you to tackle:
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.
You mean like The Sims? I *Love* that game!
And masturbation making you go blind, life at 60 will really bite the big one.
The lesson is point it away from your eyes when it shoots.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
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.
It claims that video games can cause behavioural changes, such as lack of concentration [failing to read even the short article introduction on Slashdot], difficulty with social association [not getting any], and short temper [arguing non-objectively and in a personally attached manner as is common on Slashdot] . These effects are also thought to be, to some extent, nonreversible [continuing to not get any for the rest of your life]. It does not state that you are an idiot because you play video games.
Best Slashdot comment ever