How Do Video Games Affect The Brain

Video games won't necessarily negatively affect your brain. Experts suggest ways to get the most out of playing and avoid health hazards.

How Video Games Affect the Brain

Every week, billions of hours are spent in front of displays by video gamers worldwide. The effects of video games have been studied by certain scientists. Discover how they impact the brain and behavior here.

A quick check reveals that more than 150 million Americans play video games frequently, or for at least 3 hours each week. The average American gamer is an adult of 35 years old, and 72% of players are 18 or older. The majority of parents (71%) said that their children's use of video games has a beneficial impact on their child's life.

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Battlefield 1, and Grand Theft Auto V were the top three video games of 2016. The top two genres, which account for 27.5 percent and 22.5 percent of sales, respectively, are first-person shooter and action-adventure, respectively. The first-person shooter and action genres are frequently blamed for inciting violence and addiction.

Scientists have struggled for years to agree on the relationship between violent video games and aggression. Researchers have not been able to establish a connection between playing violent video games and actual violent crimes.

Video games and brain changes

But a growing corpus of research demonstrates that playing video games can have an impact on the brain and even alter several different brain regions.

To find out how video games can affect our brains and actions, scientists have compiled and synthesized the findings from 116 research investigations. Their review's findings were released in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

"Games have occasionally been extolled or condemned, frequently without any supporting evidence. Additionally, since gaming is a well-liked activity, everyone seems to have strong ideas on the subject, according to Marc Palaus, the review's lead author.

Palaus and colleagues sought to see whether there were any patterns in the body of research on the effects of video games on brain shape and function. 100 research examined changes in brain functions and behavior, while 22 studies examined anatomical changes in the brain.

The studies' findings suggest that playing video games alters both the structure and function of our brains.

For instance, playing video games has been shown to impact attention. The studies mentioned in the review demonstrate that players of video games had improved levels of sustained attention and selective attention. Additionally, the parts of the brain involved in attention are more effective. Gamers require less activation to maintain concentration on difficult activities than non-gamers do.

The ability to recognize visual and spatial links between objects, or visuospatial skills, is demonstrated to improve in size and proficiency as a result of playing video games. The right hippocampus grew larger among long-term gamers and people who opted to adhere to a video game training regimen.

Researchers have found that playing video games can become addictive; this condition is referred to as "Internet gaming disorder."

The brain reward system, a collection of structures linked to pleasure, learning, and motivation, is altered both functionally and structurally in game addicts. These alterations, which are also present in other addictive illnesses, were highlighted by exposing video game addicts to game-related signals that elicit cravings and observing their brain responses.

According to Palaus, "We concentrated on how the brain responds to exposure to video games, but these effects do not always translate to real-life changes." Scientists are currently examining which parts of gaming affect which brain regions and how since the study into the impacts of video gaming is still in its early stages.

"It's important that we recognize this complexity," argues Palaus. "Video games probably have both beneficial (on attention, visual, and motor abilities) and bad (risk of addiction) elements.

Are brain-training games beneficial?

People should be wary of advertisements that claim that playing brain training games would improve brain function, according to a group of experts from Florida State University. According to them, science does not back up these statements.

"Our findings and previous studies confirm there's very little evidence these types of games can improve your life in a meaningful way," says Wally Boot, an associate professor of psychology and an authority on age-related cognitive loss.

More and more people believe that brain-training applications will protect them against memory loss or other cognitive issues.

Researchers looked at whether playing brain-training games helped players' working memory, which in turn helped their reasoning, recall, and processing speed—a process known as "far transfer." This wasn't the case, though.

According to Neil Charness, a professor of psychology and an expert on aging and cognition, "It's possible to train people to become very good at tasks that you would normally consider general working memory tasks: memorizing 70, 80, even 100 digits."

But these abilities frequently lack much transferability and are highly specialized. Seniors in particular should be concerned about whether mastering crossword puzzles will improve their ability to recall where their keys are. And I think the answer is no," he continues.

According to Charness, cardiovascular exercise may be beneficial if your goal is to improve cognitive performance. According to several studies, improving the brain involves more physical activity than cerebral engagement.

Video games boost memory

In contrast, a study that appeared in Nature indicated that older persons' cognitive ability may be enhanced and some of the negative effects of aging on the brain might be reversed by playing a specifically created 3-D video game.

According to researchers at the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), this offers some scientific evidence that brain training can lead to significant and long-lasting changes in the brain fitness industry, which has been criticized for lacking such data.

After 12 hours of training spread over a month, study participants between the ages of 60 and 85 performed better on the game than people in their twenties who were playing it for the first time. Moreover, sustained attention and working memory, two other important cognitive functions, were enhanced. Six months after the end of their training, these skills were still in use.

"The finding is a powerful example of how plastic the older brain is," says Dr. Adam Gazzaley, Ph.D., associate professor of neurology, physiology, and psychiatry at UCSF and director of the Neuroscience Imaging Center. Even a little brain training, according to Dr. Gazzaley, can help slow down some of the effects of aging on the brain.

Playing 3-D video games can also improve memory formation, according to a recent study by neurobiologists at the University of California-Irvine (UCI). Participants were divided into two groups: those who played 3-D video games and those who played 2-D games. Following two weeks of playing the games for 30 minutes each day, the students took memory tests that activated their hippocampus in the brain.

Compared to the 2-D group, the 3-D individuals dramatically increased their memory test results. Memory performance in the 3-D group improved by 12%, which is in line with the typical loss in memory between the ages of 45 and 70.

According to Craig Stark of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning & Memory at UCI, "First, the 3-D games have a few things the 2-D ones do not." They have a lot more spatial information to investigate. Second, there is a lot more material to understand because they are considerably more sophisticated. In either case, we are aware that this type of memory and learning not only demands but also activates the hippocampus.

Particularly strategy video games have shown the potential in enhancing cognitive performance in older persons and may protect against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Strategy games may be the best option, according to Chandramallika Basak, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Dallas' Center for Vital Longevity and School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. "If the target is to improve older adults' cognitive control, reasoning, and higher-order cognitive skills, and stave off dementia and Alzheimer's disease as long as possible, then maybe strategy games are the way to go," she says.

Basak and Charness both concur that physical activity programs should be prioritized over cognitive training when it comes to enhancing cognitive function. Exercise regimens have been related to improvements in cognition, brain anatomy, and function.

There is proof that video games can enhance memory and mood in persons with mild cognitive impairment and be a useful treatment for depression.

This new field of study will continue to investigate how video games affect the brain. Video games may have enormous promise for improving cognitive function and preventing cognitive illnesses, and we may only be scratching the surface of it.

How childhood trauma affects the brain

It is not breaking news that those who experienced maltreatment as children are more susceptible to clinical depression, anxiety, and a higher chance of suicide death. But now, scientists are starting to explain what takes place in the brain after this kind of trauma.

According to research, this kind of childhood trauma leaves lasting scars and might result in problems like post-traumatic stress disorder. Trusted Source, substance abuse, anxiety, and depressionReliable

Currently, a group from the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and McGill University in Montreal, Canada, is working to understand how a history of abuse might disrupt important brain functions and have an impact on mental health.

Dr. Pierre-Eric Lutz and colleagues reported that the neural connections in a region of the brain connected to the control of emotion, attention, and several other cognitive processes are severely damaged in adults who experienced severe maltreatment as children.

The American Journal of Psychiatry just published the findings of the study.

White matter affected after childhood abuse

White matter quantities in numerous brain regions are reduced in those who experienced neglect and abuse as children, according to an earlier study.

Myelin is the insulating "coating" that surrounds these tracts, while white matter is made up of myelinated axons, which are the projections of nerve cells that allow electric impulses to "travel" and transport information. These electrical impulses move more quickly thanks to myelin, which effectively spreads information.

Contrary to gray matter, which stops developing in early adulthood, white matter is a component of the brain whose volume and shape are correlated with a person's aptitude for learning.

Other research used MRI to scan the participants' brains, even though these alterations in the amount of white matter in persons who experienced abuse as children have been reported before.

Instead, to better understand what transpires at a molecular level, Dr. Lutz and his team chose to examine brain samples taken postmortem.

Myelination of axons was disrupted

The scientists examined brain tissue samples taken from 78 people who had committed suicide. The Douglas Bell Canada Brain Bank was used to collect all of the brain samples.

27 of these individuals had depression diagnoses and histories of severe childhood abuse, 25 had depression diagnoses but no history of abuse in their younger years, and 26 had no mental disorders identified and no such histories.

The three groups of people's brain tissue were examined and contrasted. In addition to these, the researchers also examined brain samples from 24 mouse models to show how the environment might affect the nervous system's early phases of development.

Many of the nerve fibers in people who had experienced abuse as youngsters had weaker myelin coatings. For the other two types of brain samples examined, this was not the case.

The oligodendrocytes, which are responsible for producing and maintaining myelin, were notably affected by aberrant development at the molecular level, according to the researcher's Trusted Source.

Connectivity of key brain areas impacted

In addition, the scientists discovered that some of the biggest axons were abnormally thickened. They claim that these odd changes may collectively have a detrimental effect on the connection between the anterior cingulate cortex and related brain regions, which is a part of the brain involved in processing emotions and cognitive function.

These related regions include the nucleus accumbensTrusted Source, which is involved in the brain's reward system and "tells" us when to expect pleasure, and the amygdalaTrusted Source, which is important for controlling emotions.

This may help to explain why those who experienced maltreatment as children experience emotions differently and are more likely to experience negative mental health effects and substance dependence.

The researchers conclude that early exposure to maltreatment "may permanently disrupt" the connectivity between the brain regions important for both cognitive and emotional functions.

They acknowledge that the precise mechanism at play is still unclear, but they are hopeful that more studies will help clarify the effects of early trauma on the brain.