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Brain Changes When Viewing Violent Media
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Scientists at Columbia University have used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to show that a brain network responsible for suppressing inappropriate or unwarranted aggressive behaviors became less active after study subjects watched several short clips from popular movies depicting acts of violence. These changes could render people less able to control their own aggressive behavior. Although research has shown some correlation between exposure to media violence and real-life violent behavior, there has been little direct neuroscientific support for this theory until now. 'Depictions of violent acts have become very common in the popular media,' said researcher Christopher Kelly. 'Our findings demonstrate for the first time that watching media depictions of violence does influence processing in parts of the brain that control behaviors like aggression.' The full research paper is published on the The Public Library of Science, a peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication, that publishes all its articles under a Creative Commons Attribution License."
So maybe they'll stop glorifying war, violence, and all of the blood battered details of the latest shoot-em-up rampage on the evening news? Nah, why would they do that when they can blame video games instead. Sigh.
And it doesn't make me violet and well beat the crap out of the anyone that says different.
So here is a question. How does it effect younger people?
Or what is the effect if the media is interactive in nature?
I am just waiting to see what excuese the "Video games don't contribute to violence" lobby will have to say about this.
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There's no discussion of how long these effects last. Of course our brain is going to prepare us for violence when we witness violence. If it didn't, you'd probably get killed in your first violent confrontation because you wouldn't be prepared to fight back. The question is, does viewing violent media today make me more likely to go kill people tomorrow.
When any game (video or otherwise) rewards a player for brutalizing a passive, non-threating character, I think it's reasonable to call that a desensitization device. Once someone become desensitized to something considered by all modern cultures to be objectionable, they are more likely to react the same way to similar real-world stimuli.
Just like therapists use certain interactive video imagery programs to help people with extreme phobias. If you have severe arachnophobia, but spend several hours every day interacting with realistic spiders in an simulated environment, you will be less likely to have a panic attack when confronted with a real-world spider. This is a long-documented psychologically valid method.
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Perhaps because it's a way to release aggression in a safe way? I mean how often do you say "I just want to punch something" and you would take it out on a punching bag, but not on a person? I'm certain that if I did I would temporarily lower my own inhibitions, just like a meditating man can slow his heartbeat. Why? Because I know it's a punching bag I'm punching, so I can just let go, let the adrenaline flow and punch the shit out of it. Which pressure cooker would you have, the one with or without a vent?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
In America, everything we watch has violence. You can't get away from it - go ahead, try to! (God forbid if a women's nipple is shown! Think of the children! It's OK for them to see someone get shot, though.)
What I'm trying to say is, we're constantly seeing violent images. Yeah, if you just saw that one movie or played that one game and then went into a monastery, sure the effects may not last that long. But I think that the researchers are confusing long term effects with cumulative effects.
Let's face it, we're in a violent and hostile society. The signs are all over the place: road rage, shootings, media content - violence sells after all!, how people interact in everyday situations, etc...
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I suppose all those violent movies I watched as a kid are the reason I am today a peace-loving vegetarian hippy.
"Lowers inhibitions" does not move you to some absolute state. It moves you down from wherever you would have been otherwise. In short, you may have downgraded yourself from a zen master to a hippie by corrupting your mind with those movies.
I'm sure everyone responds differently, but what we all have in common while viewing violent images is empathy.
Oh God, the irony. Is there really only two things? Pirate grammar nazi says "ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRE."
Not only are they wrong, they overlook a critical piece of information. Games have been becoming more and more realistic.
so when they look back and say "When I was a kid, nobody went crazy" it doesn't exactly apply to current games, Also anecdotal evidence is almost always wrong.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yes it shows brain activity! woooooooooooooo.. Its called thought and response.
It doesnt mean its negative or positive response, that would still be up to the individual.
What it shows is that a region of the brain which is active during the suppression of certain behaviors is less active after viewing violent media. This is a correlation with a causation. There is a correlation between activity in a region of the brain and the suppression of violent behavior, and watching violent media then causes reduced activity in this part of the brain.
This does NOT, however, show that viewing violent media induces violent behavior, or more importantly, induces a sustained pattern of violent behavior. Showing activity in a region of the brain is not "the real deal", because the brain is an extremely complex network of interactions which are very poorly understood, and you cannot consistently take activity in only one region and deduce the behavioral consequence of that.
The ACTUAL evidence is perfectly fine. People are disturbed by the extravagant conclusions being extrapolated from the evidence. There are a large volume of people who want very much to prove that violent movies and games cause people to become violent criminals, and so they try to accumulate evidence which proves this point. However, there is currently NO evidence which supports this conclusion. There are only pieces of evidence which demonstrate transient emotional effects and correlations of preferences. You cannot go from transient emotional effects to "violent media causes violent criminals", nor can you go from preference correlation to "violent media causes violent criminals".
So what you're basically saying, is sensory exposure to death has turned you off to violence, but sensory exposure to death has turned others on to violence. The variable which changes in these two conditions is the individual. Think about it.
So let's forget about anecdotes and look at the statistics. What has happened to rates of violent crimes as games have gotten more and more realistically violent? They've dropped. What's more, they've dropped most dramatically in the very demographic group that plays these games. That doesn't necessarily prove that games prevent violence, but it does prove that the pro-violence effect of games (if there is any at all) is so small as to be utterly swamped by other social and demographic factors affecting rates of violence.
As for brain scans, you can be sure that pretty much any activity that people enjoy and like to do repeatedly alters brain activity, but the interpretation of these changes in blood flow over rather large regions of the brain is still pretty much at the level of "Just-So" stories. At this point, it's a lot more speculation than science.
And 2005 is lower than 2000. But this kind of data snooping is meaningless. If you cherry-pick at these little year to year fluctuations that are down at the level of the statistical noise, you can rationalize any kind of claim you want. I'm not talking about the small and obviously statistically nonsignificant fluctuations over a year or two. With this sort of statistics, only large, consistent multiyear trends are meaningful. And the clear trend over the period when videogames have been increasing in popularity has been downward.
Which merely restates my point--the pro-violence effect of videogames if any is negligible relative to other social and demographic factors impacting rates of violence.
As for the "uncanny valley," the term was coined to account for the fact that people find state-of-the art humanoid computer graphics in multimillion dollar movies where each frame can take minutes to render to be eerie, rather than convincingly human. Are you seriously arguing that the much less sophisticated graphics in games have crossed the valley?
This is sheer rationalization. Over the period when games have gone from blocky 2D cartoon characters to 3D human-looking characters with simulated blood and gore, the only clear trend is downward. So you are arguing that it is just about to start trending upward "real soon now?"
I am a neuroscientist, and have been following such studies for years. I stand by my assessment. These blood flow measurements are intriguing, and can tell us a lot about which parts of the brain are being activated under particular circumstances, but we are a long way from understanding what that means in terms of human thought, emotion, and behavior. It is still very much speculative.
Still doesn't looks like an upward trend, though does it? If anything, it seems to have stabilized, and at a much lower level than before videogames became popular. Obviously, a downward trend cannot continue forever, or criminals would at some point be resurrecting the dead. Currently, we aren't that far above the levels that prevailed in the '50's. If videogames had such a powerful pro-violence effect--one sufficient to justify all of this concern and investment in research, then shouldn't there be a clear upward trend?