Video game enthusiasts have special brain activity and decision-making skills

Regular gamers of video games show superior sensory decision-making skills and improved activity in key areas of the brain compared to non-gamers, according to a recent study by Georgia State University researchers.

The authors, who used functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) in the study, said the findings suggest that video games can be a useful tool for training perceptual decision-making.

“Video games are played by the vast majority of our young people for more than three hours each week, but the beneficial effects on decision-making abilities and the brain are not fully known,” said Georgia State University Professor of Astronomy and Institute of Neuroscience, Mukesh Dhamala.

“Our work provides some answers to this,” Dhamala said. “Video games can be used effectively for training, for example, effective decision-making training and therapeutic interventions, once relevant brain networks have been identified.”

Dhamala was an advisor to Tim Jordan, the paper’s lead author who provided a personal example of how such research could be used to guide the use of video games and brain training. his eyes as a child.

As part of a research study when he was five years old, who was asked to cover his healthy eye and play video games as a way to strengthen vision in the weak eye, Jordan credits his video game training with helping him go from legally blind in one eye to building a strong visual processing ability. Which eventually allows him to play lacrosse and paintball, and he is now a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA.

The Georgia State Research Project involved 47 college-age participants, with 28 classified as casual video game players and 19 as non-gamers.

Subjects were placed inside an FMRI machine with a mirror that allowed them to see a signal immediately followed by a display of the moving points. Participants were asked to press a button in their right or left hand to indicate the direction in which the points were moving, or to resist pressing either button if there was no movement. directionality.

The study found that video game players were faster and more accurate in their responses, and analysis of the resulting brain scans found that the differences were related to enhanced activity in certain parts of the brain.

The authors write: “These findings indicate that playing video games potentially enhances many sub-processes of sensation, perception, and mapping action to improve decision-making skills. Activity specific to a specific task.”

The study also indicates that there is no trade-off between response speed and accuracy, with video game players doing better on both measures.

“This lack of a trade-off for speed and accuracy would point to video game playing as a good candidate for cognitive training as it relates to decision making,” the authors wrote.