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Male Brains 'Wired for Videogame Obsession'
thinkzinc notes a story indicating that, according to a new study, men have a harder time putting down a controller than women do. Researchers at Stanford did brain imaging work on a group of young test subjects while they played a simple PC game. Besides the 'obvious' conclusion that men were more 'aggressive at gaining territory on the screen', the tests also indicated that male brains showed more activity in the reward and addiction components of the brain. "The lead author, Dr. Allan Reiss, noted that most of the video games that are popular with men are territory and aggression-type games. 'These gender differences in the brain may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become hooked on video games than females,' he said. Other recent surveys indicate that about 40 percent of Americans regularly play games on a computer or console, but young males are two or three times more likely than females to feel addicted to video games, Reiss said. "
Video games are generally written to suit the obsessions of male brains, are they not?
-Matt
The pictures my brain is wired for interest in leave nothing to question.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
...and in other news, scientists studying grizzly bears in Canada have finally shown that they do, in fact, defecate in the woods.
I prefer to be certain they are pictures of the opposite sex.
Every time I read a report of this form it always has the underling tone that what men are better at is a debilitating weakness. Why?
Wait a second...
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Please take your politically correct pronouncements elsewhere. I am a liberal, but also a science-minded person. I feel ashamed for all liberals when science is denounced when it might suggest that humans are not all equal in the ways liberals would like them to be. Sorry, but real science doesn't care how the world should be, it only cares how it is.
Why is it not controversial to investigate whether certain races are more prone to certain illnesses, but it is controversial to offer a drug that seems to have more health benefits to one race than another?
Well I'll answer my own question. Some of the concern is based on justified anger over past atrocities committed by people who called themselves 'scientists' (e.g. infecting blacks with Syphilis). But when that anger translates to 'In 2008 I won't accept a drug that is targeted for my race because it might be a plot to harm us', I think we're talking tinfoil hat time.
Why is it not controversial to suggest that one gender has more physical strength than another, but it is heresy to even wonder whether one gender might have more intelligence/compassion/aggression/addiction than the other?
My suspicion is that people get more sensitive when we're talking about the mind vs. the body, because then the subject is the core of who we are. Fine, we're all sensitive about that. But what justifies a knee-jerk reaction that this is just 'junk science'? As a scientist would say, prove it!
By the way, personal anecdotal evidence suggests that this study is on to something. I know that my son and I are certainly prone to being hooked on territorial/aggressive games, while my daughter and wife don't show such tendency. And this pattern extends to other people I know. This is not proof, just commentary.
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
Title of the article: "Male brains wired for video game obsession"
That is VERY offensive. Men in the U.S. are the targets of an extreme amount of hostility. I'm guessing that the person who wrote that headline knew that being hostile toward men is in fashion, and wrote it to get attention for the advertisements.
Quote: "These gender differences in the brain may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become hooked on video games than females," he said.
Fraud: He has not shown any gender differences in the brain. He has shown that, at the time, those particular subjects were using their brains differently.
The article does imply something useful about brains, however. The fact that Slashdot editors wanted us to see it may be an indication that the editors are not in touch with reality. Maybe that's because the editors spent so much time playing games rather than trying to relate to reality.
If you want to experience a society where men aren't hated, go to Brazil. However, don't fall in love with the first woman you meet, like many of my acquaintances.
Just so we're clear, the Tuskegee expiriments did not involve infecting black men with syphilis. I know it was a minor point in your post, but it was inaccurate, is a common mistake, and I think given it's historical significance it's important to get it right. The men already had syphilis, and when the study began there was no known cure for it. 15 years into the study penicillin was known to cure it, so there was no reason to continue the study other than to watch poor uneducated black men die, which they did, and furthermore the men were lied to to keep them from getting cured.
But the study did NOT involve infecting them men with the disease directly. In some ways that's worse, because the study seems to have started off as a good study by good scientists and then morphed somehow into preventing patients from getting cured entirely because of their race. An evil study like "let's infect black men with syphillis" is something only comic book villians will waste time doing. A good study eventually turning into evil, I don't know how that happens or how we would prevent that today.