Brains and Video Games
How intergalactic combat provides a window into your
head.
A study conducted at the U of I indicates that the size
of certain brain structures profoundly influences cognitive skills that are at
play in video games—and in everyday life.
Of all the insults you hurled at your brother as you beat
his score in Pac-Man, you probably didn’t mention your nucleus accumbens. A
study conducted at the U of I, however, indicates that the size of certain
brain structures profoundly influences cognitive skills that are at play in
video games—and in everyday life.
The study found that achievement seen among men and women
trained on a new video game could be partly predicted by measuring the volume
of three structures in their brains. That is, the bigger these particular brain
structures are, the better you can make those Atari space invaders wish they’d
turned back at Pluto.
But the implications are broader than video games. The
study adds to the evidence that distinctive tissues within the cerebral cortex
profoundly influence a person’s ability to refine his or her motor skills,
learn new procedures, develop useful strategies, and adapt to a quickly
changing environment.
Psychology professors Art Kramer, Gabrielle Gratton,
Monica Fabiani, and Dan Simons, who conducted the study with others from
several other universities with funding from the Office of Naval Research,
began the research by asking, “Is bigger better?”
To find answers, they used magnetic resonance imaging to
analyze the size of certain brain regions in 39 healthy adults (aged 18-28; 10
of them male) who had spent less than three hours a week playing video games in
the previous two years. Then the subjects were trained on one of two versions
of Space Fortress, a video game developed at the U of I where players try to
destroy a fortress without being destroyed first by a variety of hazards.
Players who had a larger nucleus accumbens did better
than their counterparts in early stages of the training period, which
researchers attribute to the fact that the nucleus accumbens is part of the
brain’s reward center and tied to a person’s motivation to achieve goals,
including blowing up space fortresses and other video game feats.
Certain players were subjected to variable priority
training, in which they were asked to periodically shift priorities in the
game. Researchers found that those with a larger caudate nucleus and putamen
did best and exhibited superior flexibility in decision-making.
“This study tells us a lot about how the brain works when
it is trying to learn a complex task,” says Kirk Erickson, a psychology professor
at the University of Pittsburgh who participated. “We can use information about
the brain to predict who is going to learn certain tasks at a more rapid rate.”
Image Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/191110
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