So I’m going to say it right now, I’m a big fan of neuroscience, psychology and everything else that might give an edge on cognition.
Furthermore I’m an avid gamer, playing on almost any console released in the last 2 decades
(PS1, PS2, Xbox360, XB1, PC, PSP, PSVita, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, 3DS, SEGA Genesis, and some Nintendo NES knock-off, basically a big list)
and Genres
(Action, FPS, RPG, MMORPG, RTS, Card Games, Fighting Games, Puzzle Games, aka another big list).
And understanding how the latter impacts the former is an important task, ney, mission, as far as I’m concerned.
And there is reason for concern, which definitely may shock you
(just kidding, this isn't a clickbait article),
So yeah, the whole video games - cognition relationship isn’t as black & and white as most of us think.
Since it took me close 8 hours to finish this post, I’ll be presenting only one main research paper, and a few small researches in case some background information is needed.
And with the background we begin: a brain structure called the hippocampus (no, not a college attending hippo, as the name might suggest) has numerous cognitive responsibilites, starting from semantic and autobiographical memory, to spatial navigation, and it even has a major part in regulating and processing emotions! So there are plenty of reasons we would want our college attending hippo to be big and strong (connected to many other neurons with stable synapses).
So the research I’d like to present tried to tests several interesting hypothesis:
- How do 1st & 3rd person shooting impact hippocampus growth or atrophy (shrinkage)
- How 3D Platformer games (E.G Mario 64) impact it
- What is the relation between the hippocampus & Action RPG games such as Dead Island & Borderlands 2
- And finally whether spatial & response navigation strategies change the outcome after playing said games
Spatial & Responsive What?
You see, there are two main ways to navigate both in the real world, and a virtual one.
- A spatial way - building a cognitive map of your surroundings and figuring out the path from point A to point B by using the map in your head
- And a responsive way - counting the steps from one turn to another, and possibly memorizing how the area before a turn looks like
Can You Guess Which One Is Healthier?
17 Action Gamers (those who play games like Call of Duty, GTA V, Counterstrike, Tomb Raider, Gears of War and such, for at least than 6 hours a week) and 16 people who never played Action Games in their life. Both had their brains scanned through an MRI machine.
“Significant differences were found whereby actionVGPs had reduced grey matter in the left hippocampus compared to nonVGPs, ”
While they compared the average hippocampal volume on Action Gamers VS Non Action Gamers (or generally Non Gamers), they found that the hippocampus on the left hemisphere was smaller in Action Game Players.
The
left hippocampus is actually associated with verbal memory, while the right is the one mostly associated with spatial and visual information. Weird.
So playing lots of action games MIGHT impact your ability to memorize facts for a test, and even to remember new information about your friends, family, and people you have strong negative or positive feelings for.
Additionally the researchers compared differences in 4 groups of non action gamers:
- those who trained 90 hours in action games, and were response navigators
- those who trained 90 hours in action games, and were spatial navigators
- those who played 90 hours in 3D Platformer games, and were response navigators
- those who played 90 hours in 3D Platformer games, and were spatial navigators
The results were baffling:
- group 1 had a reduction in volume of their right hippocampus (seen to be correlated with non-verbal memory)
- group 2 gained an increase in volume of the left hippocampus, which oddly enough is mostly correlated with verbal memory
- group 3 had gains in the right hippocampus, suggesting that certain games force players to make cognitive maps, even if their default navigational strategy is a responsive one
- and group 4 actually had a gain of volume in the right entorhinal cortex, which seems to be crucial in association tasks, but not in “single object” memorization tasks
Action RPGs - Elixirs or Poisons?
Lastly the researchers measured differences in hippocampal size of non action gamers before and after they have played 90 hours of Action RPG games such as Dead Island and Borderlands 2.
And when people ask you what’s your (gaming) poison, I hope your answer was not actionRPGs. Because, and I quote “This revealed a bilateral decrease in the hippocampus at post-training across all participants”,
in other words,
whether you navigate visually, by building a cognitive map,
or memorize distances between checkpoints along the way,
your memory generating hippo will not be happy with you if you play Borderlands, Dead Island, or God forbid, World of Warcraft.
I’ve been working on this text for almost 8 hours, so if these kinds of analyses interest you, please give this post an upvote (even a 1% upvote will do), so that I'll know how big of an audience is there for academic pieces like this.
Sources
Main research paper with action, 3d platformer, action RPG and navigation type comparison https://www.nature.com/articles/mp2017155?foxtrotcallback=true
Brief summory if hippocampal functions https://www.news-medical.net/health/Hippocampus-Functions.aspx
Emotional processing and you https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3340463/
Hippocampus volume reduction in various mental disorders http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC2840841/
Synapses explained https://www.britannica.com/science/synapse
WTF is atrophy?!!! https://www.britannica.com/science/atrophy
Hippocampal functions variability on the left and the right hemisphere https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627302008309
Emotions impact on memories formation and retrieval http://www.memory-key.com/memory/emotion
Visual memory impairment in people with right hippocampal damage due to right temporal lobe epilepsy https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2170342/
Higher activity in left hippocampus while memorising a list of words, higher right activity when memorising pictures https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC182590/
Entorhinal Cortex lesions cause impairments in associative memories in monkeys http://www.jneurosci.org/content/24/44/9811
An example of tasks Entorhinal Cortex lisions impaired http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/467/Paired-Associate-Learning.html
Tasks the Entorhinal lesions DID NOT impair www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/montag/vandplite/pages/chap_11/ch11p4.html
Image Sources
https://obssr.od.nih.gov/video-games-as-a-prescription-to-enhance-cognitive-function/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus
https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-path-point-to-point-b-vector-illustration-image36432080
http://www.wowhead.com/item=9179/elixir-of-greater-intellect
You got a 100% vote so you'll know I want more content like this. :) really interesting.
Hehe, I saw your messages about CS:GO on the Israeli Discord, I hope this post doesn't ruin your experience playing that :)
Don't worry about that :D
You can not get the current prajukiti in it and do whatever you like
im goin to buy an xbox right now to get smarter
Interesting article, imacryptorick. Like everything else, video games are both good and bad. Playing a lot is a problem in my opinion.
Well, playing up to 12 hours a week can apparently be positive for the brain. I hope most people don't intend to play longer than that ^_^
I actually do :D
Very interesting! I have always been interested in the impact of games, TV and movies on the brain. I've read in the past that the influence of movies and television at low ages is very harmful, information that parents should know nowadays. Thanks for the post
Fascinating post! I am a long time video game player but never evaluated the cognitive effect. Been playing games since the Sega master system / nes. Here are a bit of my console credentials. Some of them are a bit... obscure
SMS, NES, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, original Gameboy, GameGear, 3DO, N64, Atari Jaguar, Virtual Boy, PSX, PS2, XBOX, GBA, Nintendo DS, Gamecube, XBOX 360, Wii U, 3DS, and now Nvidia Shield.
I play mostly on my shield and tend to be a very nostalgic gamer so it's chock full of emulators. Seems the older I get. The less time I have for gaming but I will always have a soft spot for them.
It's one of the biggest things my brothers and I connect on. I also have a dream of creating a turn based strategy game one day. Wonder the affect on those on the brain. Hmmm
I have an intention to publish a post about it some day :)
And if you could consider a card game, there's a Steemian who makes cards about various celebrities on the blockchain, maybe there could be a Steemit The Gathering game for the platform
Very interesting and well explained in understandable English. I wont forget the hippo form and meaning from now on
Peace
Awesome post! Well executed, well delivered QUALITY CONTENT HERE!
Thank you for sharing these nice information. Me personally! I find video games very good and a good training for the brain. In the same time I dont like all the violence in the new games. Children are not supposed to see and learn violence.
Enjoy your weekend :)
Very interseting topic for me.
For now I just gave you upvote for the efforts. I'll read it all later.
Thanks friend
The research is a bit heavy on me but yes the VG do have an impact on the brain, I feel at times they are boosting for the brain, but if the play time is very long it gets you disconnected from your surroundings. The brain also kind of shuts down on lot of other things as it occupies too much of space in the brain.
Thank you @imacryptorick for sharing your knowledge.
I feel meditation is the best for brain :-)
Nice information, keep going with new nice post!
Smart information friend
you can call it a mind game brother :p
but we can't control our mind with some remots or some video game controlers.
Awesome research into the correlation between hippocampus size and video gamers. I’m a big time reader of science and anything health related n you put this together very nicely! Thanks for the interesting read and taking the time to put it together for us. Wish my votes were worth more so I could give you more for the quality content of this post! :)
Woww...I like it, Very Nice @imacryptorick !!!
This is quite intriguing. I predominantly play Call of Duty, and I tend to do it at the end of a stressful day as a way to allow my overthinking brain to switch off. It seems to do the trick, and I find it quite therapeutic, but I've never considered the long term implications.
Interesting stuff, I also took some courses in neuropsych... followed you back!
this is kind of interesting, I used to be a regular gamer, before wife and kids, and I miss those days. Good post
I stopped playing games but now I gat to go get started.
You can check on my post and comment.
https://steemit.com/steemeducation/@solomon507/indiscipline-in-secondary-schools-causes-and-remedies
Also check my blog @solomon507.
I would love to have a chat with you on discord. I am @solomon507
Quite an undervalued post will that amount of info in there.
What I know and notice and that the 'younger' generation of surgeons have way better skills in laparoscopy due to their videogaming experience. The ability to look somwhere and use your hands somewhere else, using 2d for 3d.
To me to be honest, this piece is too technical, but thats due to my English skills, and not your writing skills.
Man I don't know where to begin. I love the subject matter, I think it's a question that should be on the gamer's licence test: - How healthy is your brain?- You've got a right aproach to it and it really does matter, in what you spend that many hours practicing (repeating time after time after...).
The first thing that popped into my mind as I read was, where is this research or MRI wrong? And it hit me. It's not that the videogame itself (nor the tv screen) is damaging your brain... you are! Playing can be a brain's gym but you have to make it right in order to do so. I mean what is lacking on the assumption that videogames are the problem is that you're not taking into account other several factors, such as time of sleep, what kind of diet are you having, physical training and also some kind of "antigaming environment" where and when you rest from the game! What I'm trying to say is, even when your time at the screen and pad is too much, it still wouldn't be the videogames fault. It's your time and your schedule at it, and how you support or maintain that kind of style, but being really healthy at the same time. I would put the example of the F1 driver. He has to be in such shape (both physically and mental) so that he can last (survive) 2 to 3 hrs sitting inside a car. This means that you NEED to have a training regime or something like that (lol) in order to spend a lifetime of gaming. Hope I could make myself only a little bit clear on that matter. English still isn't my stronger element. But kudos to your post. I really apreciate what you meant. Cheers!
great info I like video games but feel they are bad for me and how I act. Long term they seem to make you less outgoing.