Video Games May Impact Your Brain and the Way You Think

How does playing video games impact your brain? Scientists may have found out. They've revealed that video game players exhibit more efficient visual attention abilities, and are more likely to use navigation strategies that rely on the brain's reward system rather than the brain's spatial memory system.

Video gamers spend a collective three billion hours per week in front of their screens. In fact, it's estimated that the average young person will have spent about 10,000 hours gaming by the time they're 21. The effects of video gaming on the brain, though, are only beginning to be understood.

Previous research has shown that video games have a positive effect on attention. However, it's important to confirm that there aren't any negative impacts.

In this latest study, the researchers looked at a group of adult gamers spending at least six hours per week on this activity. The researchers found that the gamers relied on the caudate-nucleus part of the brain more than non-gamers.

"For more than a decade now, research has demonstrated that action video game players display more efficient visual attention abilities, and our current study has once again confirmed this notion," said Gregory West, the first author of the new study, in a news release. "However, we also found that gamers rely on the caudate-nucleus to a greater degree than non-gamers.  Past research has shown that people who rely on caudate nucleus-dependent strategies have lower grey matter and functional brain activity in the hippocampus. This means that people who spend a lot of time playing video games may have reduced hippocampal integrity, which is associated with an increased risk of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease."

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

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