How Playing Video Games Affects Your Brain
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Salma Hossein
- . November 2, 2022
- . Update: November 11, 2022 1:06 am
The fact that video gamers spend 3 billion hours every week in front of their displays demonstrates that video gaming is a popular pastime. Due to their ubiquitous use, scientists have examined how video games affect the brain and behavior. These consequences can be either favorable or harmful. We investigate the evidence.
More than 150 million people in the United States typically play video games for at least three hours per week. 72 percent of American gamers are 18 or older, with the average gamer being 35 years old. Seventy-one percent of parents believe video games have a beneficial impact on their child’s life.
Sales of video games continue to rise annually. In 2016, the video game business sold over 24.5 billion games, an increase from 2015’s 23.2 billion and 2014’s 21.4 billion.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Battlefield 1, and Grand Theft Auto V were the top three best-selling video games of 2016. These games belong to the first-person shooter and action-adventure genres, which account for 27.5% and 22.5%, respectively, of sales. Action and first-person shooter games are frequently accused of inciting anger, violence, and addiction.
Decades of studies on the relationship between violent video games and aggression have failed to produce a scientific agreement. Scientists have been unable to establish a causal relationship between playing violent video games and actual acts of violence.
How do games change the brain?
A growing body of evidence indicates, however, that video gaming can impact the brain and create changes in numerous brain regions.
Scientists have recently compiled and analyzed the findings of 116 scientific studies on the effects of video games on the brain and behavior. Their review findings were published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
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“Games have occasionally been lauded or vilified, frequently without empirical evidence to support such judgments. In addition, gaming is a popular pastime, so everyone tends to have strong ideas on the subject,” adds Marc Palaus, the review’s lead author.
Palaus and his team intended to determine if any trends had arisen about the effect of video games on the structure and activity of the brain by analyzing all previous data. Twenty-two of the assessed studies examined anatomical changes in the brain, while one hundred examined changes in brain function and behavior.
The results of the studies reveal that playing video games alters not only the function but also the structure of our brains.
For instance, it is known that video game use affects attentiveness. Several types of attention, including sustained attention and selective attention, are enhanced among video game players, as demonstrated by the studies included in this review. In addition, the attention-related regions of the brain are more efficient in gamers than in non-gamers, requiring less activity to remain focused on difficult activities.
Playing video games also enlarges and improves the areas of the brain responsible for visuospatial abilities, which is the capacity to recognize visual and spatial correlations between objects. The right hippocampus was expanded in long-term gamers and persons who chose to undertake a video game training program.
Researchers have revealed that computer games can be addictive, a phenomenon referred to as “Internet gaming disorder.”
In gaming addicts, the brain reward system – a set of structures related with pleasure, learning, and motivation – is altered functionally and structurally. Exposing video game addicts to craving-inducing game-related signals and observing their brain responses revealed these changes, which are also seen in other addictive illnesses.
“We focused on how the brain responds to exposure to video games, but these effects do not always translate to real-world changes,” said Palaus. The research into the impacts of video gaming is still in its infancy, and experts are still investigating which features of gaming influence which brain regions and in what manner.
“It’s likely that video games have both positive (effects on attention, visual, and motor abilities) and negative (addiction risk) components, and it’s crucial that we acknowledge this complexity,” concludes Palaus.
Are brain-games good for the brain?
A team of researchers from Florida State University has suggested that individuals should be suspicious of advertisements that claim brain training games improve cognitive ability. They stated that the scientific evidence does not support these claims.
Wally Boot, associate professor of psychology and expert on age-related cognitive decline, states, “Our findings and previous research confirm there is little evidence that these types of games can improve your life in a meaningful way.”
People increasingly believe that brain-training applications will protect them from memory loss and cognitive diseases.
Researchers examined whether playing brain-training games boosted the working memory of players, hence enhancing other cognitive abilities such as reasoning, memory, and processing speed — a phenomenon termed “far transfer” by scientists. This was not the case, though.
Neil Charness, a prominent expert on aging and cognition and a professor of psychology, adds, “It is feasible to train people to become very proficient at activities that are typically considered general working memory tasks: memorizing 70, 80, or even 100 digits.”
“However, these skills tend to be somewhat specialized and not highly transferable. Seniors should be concerned about whether or not becoming proficient at crossword puzzles will help them recall where they placed their keys. And the answer is likely no,” he continues.
If your goal is to increase cognitive performance, aerobic exercise may be beneficial, according to Charness. According to some research, aerobic activity rather than mental work is more beneficial to the brain.
In contrast, a study published in Nature indicated that the use of a particularly developed 3-D video game could boost cognitive performance in older persons and counteract some of the negative effects of aging on the brain.
Scientists from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) explain that this provides a measure of scientific support in the brain fitness field, which has been criticized for a lack of data, supporting the notion that brain training can induce significant and enduring changes.
After 12 hours of training over the course of one month, the performance of research participants aged 60 to 85 exceeded that of persons in their 20s playing the game for the first time. In addition, two other important cognitive domains were enhanced, namely working memory and sustained attention. These skills were maintained six months after course completion.
Dr. Adam Gazzaley, Ph.D., associate professor of neurology, physiology, and psychiatry at UCSF and head of the Neuroscience Imaging Center, describes the discovery as a compelling illustration of the brain’s plasticity in later age. Dr. Gazzaley finds it hopeful that even minimal brain training can cure some of the age-related brain degeneration.
A new study undertaken by neurobiologists at the University of California-Irvine (UCI) discovered that playing 3-D video games may also aid in memory formation. Participants were assigned to either a group that played video games with a 2-D environment or a group that played video games with a 3-D environment. After playing the games for 30 minutes every day for two weeks, the students were administered memory tests that activated the hippocampus.
The individuals in the 3-D group greatly outperformed those in the 2-D group on memory tests. Memory performance in the 3-D group increased by the same amount that memory performance typically diminishes between the ages of 45 and 70.
Craig Stark, director of UCI’s Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory, explains, “First, 3-D games have a few advantages over 2-D games.” “There is far more spatial information to investigate in there. Second, they are far more complicated and include a great deal more information. In any case, we are aware that this type of learning and memory not only activates but also requires the hippocampus.”
Particularly, strategy video games have showed promise in enhancing cognitive performance in older persons and may offer protection against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
“If the goal is to improve the cognitive control, reasoning, and higher-order cognitive skills of older adults and delay the onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, then strategy games may be the way to go,” says Chandramallika Basak, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Dallas’ Center for Vital Longevity and School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
In terms of enhancing cognitive function, Basak concurs with Charness that physical activity programs should take precedence over cognitive training. Physical exercise programs have been associated with beneficial impacts on cognition, brain structure, and brain function.
There is evidence that video games may be an effective treatment for depression, as well as improve memory and mood in adults with mild cognitive impairment.
The effect of video games on the brain is an emerging field of study that will be further investigated. The potential of video games to improve cognitive ability and avoid cognitive diseases may just be scratched.
