Video gamers who play regularly show superior sensorimotor decision-making skills and enhanced activity in key regions of the brain as compared to non-players, according to a recent US study published in the Neuroimage: Reports journal.
Analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of video game players suggested that video games could be a useful tool for training in perceptual decision-making, the authors said.
“Video games are played by the overwhelming majority of our youth more than three hours every week, but the beneficial effects on decision-making abilities and the brain are not exactly known,” said lead researcher Mukesh Dhamala, associate professor at Georgia State University.
“Our work provides some answers on that,” Assov Prof Dhamala elaborated. “Video game playing can effectively be used for training – for example, decision-making efficiency training and therapeutic interventions – once the relevant brain networks are identified.”
Assoc Prof Dhamala was the adviser for Tim Jordan, PhD, the paper’s lead author, who had a personal example of how such research could inform the use of video games for training the brain.
Dr Jordan, had weak vision in one eye as a child. As part of a research study when he was about 5, he was asked to cover his good eye and play video games as a way to strengthen the vision in the weak one. Dr Jordan credits video game training with helping him go from legally blind in one eye to building strong capacity for visual processing, allowing him to eventually play lacrosse and paintball. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA.
The Georgia State research project involved 47 university-aged-age participants, with 28 categorised as regular video game players and 19 as non-players.
The subjects lay inside an fMRI machine with a mirror that let them see a cue immediately followed by a display of moving dots. Participants were asked to press a button in their right or left hand to indicate the direction the dots were moving, or resist pressing either button if there was no directional movement.
Video game players proved to be faster and more accurate with their responses. Analysis of the brain scans found that the differences were associated with enhanced activity in certain parts of the brain.
“These results indicate that video game playing potentially enhances several of the subprocesses for sensation, perception and mapping to action to improve decision-making skills,” the authors wrote. “These findings begin to illuminate how video game playing alters the brain in order to improve task performance and their potential implications for increasing task-specific activity.”
No trade-off was observed between speed and accuracy of response – the video game players were better on both measures.
“This lack of speed-accuracy trade-off would indicate video game playing as a good candidate for cognitive training as it pertains to decision-making,” the authors wrote.
Source: Georgia State University
