Playing Action Video Games May Be Bad For Your Brain, Study Finds (www.cbc.ca)

An anonymous reader shares a report:Playing first-person shooter video games causes some users to lose grey matter in a part of their brain associated with the memory of past events and experiences, a new study by two Montreal researchers concludes. Gregory West, an associate professor of psychology at the Universite de Montreal, says the neuroimaging study, published Tuesday in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, is the first to find conclusive evidence of grey matter loss in a key part of the brain as a direct result of computer interaction. "A few studies have been published that show video games could have a positive impact on the brain, namely positive associations between action video games, first-person shooter games, and visual attention and motor control skills," West told CBC News. To date, no one has shown that human-computer interactions could have negative impacts on the brain -- in this case the hippocampal memory system." The four-year study by West and Veronique Bohbot, an associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University, looked at the impact of action video games on the hippocampus, the part of the brain that plays a critical role in spatial memory and the ability to recollect past events and experiences.

Comments

Who has time for action video games

[Austerity Empowers]

What with all the porn, crystal meth, tv and politics we have to get through.

Witch hunt

[Anonymous Coward]

Just another bogus study in a long line of anti-video game "studies".

Re:Witch hunt

[skids]

Actually, it's just another sensationalist headline saying wrong things about a study that is really very interesting. I recommend RTFA.

Twitch games build up one part of the brain and make the hippocampus atrophy. 3-D platformers (VR?) build up the hippocampus. The authors suggest FPS game makers take away the mini-maps and wayfinders and add more scenery and mazes to balance things out.

Which makes me surprised that BL2 was to them a typical action game... the maps in that are usually best navigated by scenery and aren't linear or especially simple.

Bad or evolution?

[dbrueck]

Grey matter loss seems bad, but at the same time I wonder if we're just detecting humans adapting to technology - maybe it's not so much a net loss in brain functionality but more a manifestation of tradeoffs being made.

For example, growing up there was a lot of emphasis on memorizing information (memorize all the countries of the world, memorize all US states and their capitals, memorize these dates in history, memorize these mathematical equations, etc.). These days that seems far less useful.

So, if we offload to technology the storage and recall of trivia, it wouldn't be surprising to find that some part of our brains are less used compared with those of people 50 years ago. But maybe we'd also see that the brains of people today are better at being exposed to more data without being overwhelmed, or better at quickly sifting through mounds of information to find something in particular, or better at distilling lots of info down to its essence.

Re:Bad or evolution?

[David_Hart]

Grey matter loss seems bad, but at the same time I wonder if we're just detecting humans adapting to technology - maybe it's not so much a net loss in brain functionality but more a manifestation of tradeoffs being made.

For example, growing up there was a lot of emphasis on memorizing information (memorize all the countries of the world, memorize all US states and their capitals, memorize these dates in history, memorize these mathematical equations, etc.). These days that seems far less useful.

So, if we offload to technology the storage and recall of trivia, it wouldn't be surprising to find that some part of our brains are less used compared with those of people 50 years ago. But maybe we'd also see that the brains of people today are better at being exposed to more data without being overwhelmed, or better at quickly sifting through mounds of information to find something in particular, or better at distilling lots of info down to its essence.

The study is more nuanced than that. It says that Response learners (people who count right and left turns) lose grey matter when playing FPS games for extended periods of time. But Spacial learners (those who use landmarks) seem not to be affected. I use spacial cues in FPS games because there is no way that I could remember left/right turns in games like Skyrim.

The study also found that playing 3D platformers (i.e. Mario Brothers) reversed the grey matter loss.

Re:Bad or evolution?

[Narcocide]

This is probably more on-point than conclusions that it's just outright brain damage. Lots of studies have shown there are tradeoffs for certain types of intellectual capacity. In one notable study they found that all chimpanzees have perfect photographic memories. The researchers hypothesized that human beings may have lost the ubiquity of this mental trait as a tradeoff for language processing capabilities.

Misleading title

[Marcpek]

As usual, news sites like make catchy titles on scientific articles while ignoring important information. From the abstract: "These results show that video games can be beneficial or detrimental to the hippocampal system depending on the navigation strategy that a person employs and the genre of the game." So that doesn't mean that playing video games shrinks your brain, does it.

And next week it will be.....

[Zorro]

Playing Action Video Games May Be GOOD For Your Brain, Study Finds..... Click bait!

Study actually looks at navigation strategies used

[celest]

Actual study (open access): http://www.nature.com/mp/journ...

The actual study looks at the navigation strategies used in games and separates both the type of games and the type of players; i.e., players of the same game using different navigation strategies develop their brains differently.

The finding is that if you play first person shooters and just wander around and shoot things, the hippocampus doesn't develop (and decreases in mass). By contrast, if you learn to navigate based on references in the game (or, by dying repeatedly by navigating incorrectly, as is common in the Mario game control group they used) your brain develops.

It would be interesting to see a comparison between Call of Duty pub players and competitive Counter-Strike players. The former just "shoot everything that moves". The latter are highly coordinated like SWAT teams. The present findings seem to suggest that the latter--in the same game--would develop their brain matter, whereas the former would not.

Media cycle

[DrYak]

In other words :

Article "Doing activity X will improve training on capability A and B, but the unused skill C and D will dwindle"
Press "OMG! X is going to kill us all because of C and D ! Quick, click on our advertisement!"

Cue in ob. reference to PhDcomics

Oh no! We are DOOMed!

[jmcwork]

I Quake with fear that the loss of grey matter could resulting in me leading a Half-Life. (OK, I got you started, do not disappoint me.)

Re: As an actual video game engineer

[__aaclcg7560]

Mostly you get shit about it, because you cite it as evidence of your "miracle worker" status - as if getting paid an IT salary for doing low value work that is best accomplished by facilities and maintenance staff is somehow an accomplishment worthy of note.

These are IT closets that facilities refuses to clean up. Mostly because they don't want the electronic waste disposal fees charged to their budget. When I worked at a local hospital, it took three weeks for management to figure who was going to pay for three 40-yard dumpsters to throw out the packing materials (foam and cardboard) for 750 PCs and 1,500 monitors.

If you don't think it's important or relevant, why do YOU bring it up?

Because it pisses off my trolls.