Study Finds Frequent Gaming Changes Your Brain
Coolhand2120 writes "Gamers always felt they had more grey matter. The LA Times reports there is now proof: 'Fourteen-year-olds who were frequent video gamers had more gray matter in the rewards center of the brain than peers who didn't play video games as much — suggesting that gaming may be correlated to changes in the brain much as addictions are. European scientists reported the discovery Tuesday in the journal Translational Psychiatry. Psychologist Simone Kuhn of Ghent University in Belgium and colleagues recruited 154 healthy 14-year-olds in Berlin and divided them into two groups. Twenty-four girls and 52 boys were frequent gamers who played at least nine hours of video games each week. Fifty-eight girls and 20 boys were infrequent gamers, who played less than nine hours a week. Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed differences in the test subjects' brains. Frequent gamers had more gray matter in a portion of the brain known as the left ventral striatum, which affects the interplay of emotions and behavior. Previous research identified striatal function as a 'core candidate promoting addictive behavior.'"
Slashdot Headline: Study Finds Frequent Gaming Changes Your Brain
FTA: They couldn't determine if the frequent gamers' brains grew larger as a result of playing video games or if those kids were attracted to gaming because that part of their brain was enlarged in the first place
At least the submitter could have read the article.
Any type of learning changes the way your brain works.
They're all pretty young, the sample appears pretty small and the sample would seem unbalanced.
Isn't the brain already undergoing radical changes at that age? I am not doubting there being an effect, but how does that effect pan out over time? Will a difference remain a decade later?
How does frequent gaming affect people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, etc.?
Ever find yourself in a public place, like a mall or stadium and the little thought flashes through your mind, "I just need the really big gun and I could clear this place out." or "I wonder how much gold I could get clearing this place out" Fortunately some little sanity barrier prevents you.
Found ideas like that in my mind after epic gaming sessions. Don't play those kinds of games now so those thoughts haven't popped up in years. I hope they're gone for good, I didn't like the idea I could even visualise something like those thoughts.
Now I wonder how much wood I need, with that port near by, to build another settlement.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The results are equally consistent with the hypothesis that those with more developed left ventral striatum are more disposed to gaming.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The study did not say that games change the brain, it says that people with this type of brain are more apt to play games. RTFA
So the survey included twice as many boys as girls in the treatment group, and three times as many girls as boys in the control group?
That seems like a serious flaw. Men are widely considered more impulsive and more likely to have addiction problems in general, both in popular perception and in some research results. What if men's brains simply respond more to games and other dopamine-related activities (i.e. potentially addictive stuff) than women's?
I hate to be that guy who asks a possibly moronic, self-congratulatory question about sample size, basic method, etc., but I still think it's hard to statistically control the basic differences between men and women with such massively skewed gender samplings.
The article says that it's not clear if playing games changes the brains, or if kids with those structures tend to game more.
Sensationalism? What sensationalism? I see no sensationalism here!
Close to 100 girls actually admitted they play video games!
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The study did NOT find that gaming changes your brain.
Slashdot editors - please RTFA when you get sent a submission!
It found a correlation between certain brain physiology and gaming but they state fairly carefully:
"Whether the volumetric differences in ventral striatum between frequent and moderate video game players are preconditions that lead to a vulnerability for preoccupation with gaming or whether they are a consequence of long-lasting activation during gaming can not be determined with a cross-sectional study."
They're not claiming causality here. They're claiming a correlation in their findings. Not ruling it out, but they're definitely not saying they found one causes the other. So the headline is completely wrong.
...gaming may be correlated to changes in the brain much as addictions are.
Can't...sleep...must...keep...leveling...
Sound familiar to anyone?
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
I won't argue that video games don't have some detrimental impact on young, impressionable minds. Spending your days devoting yourself to a diluted group of persons whose sole purpose is to destroy each other through verbal and pseudo-physical violence, or learning fictional dialogue that actually means nothing in real life, or using it to avoid doing chores and other forms of stress or work probably become a "good idea" to them after a while. The gaming and Internet forever alone lifestyle is sometimes, indeed, a more lucid reality than real life to some.
But little kids are led to believe that video games are the coolest thing since sliced bread. Parents are getting lazier and as video games cover so many different things, its easy to keep your child content with the vidya. Like most kids and pre-teens will do, they will bitch like crazy if you try to move them and make them go outside, but only because nobody put them on a track to do things outside. You can't expect someone to enjoy an activity intended to be enjoyable when nobody ever showed them why they can or should enjoy it.
How timely, I just read a blog post about brain plasticity. Basically, the list of activities that do not alter the brain is probably much shorter than the list of activities that do. The human brain is constantly rewiring itself. Here's an article about a study that shows brain plasticity may be even more radical than we thought, possibly even reprogramming the genomes of individual neurons: http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/11/genome.html
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Heart medication causes heart attacks.
A study finds that people on heart medication are 3 times more likely to suffer a sudden heart attack, than other people. The conclusion is obvious.
Run with the lemmings, and you'll get your feet wet.