"Run! Duck! Cover... Oops, what was I doing again?" If you are an avid action gamer you may want to think twice about spending so many hours trying to survive 1955 Vietnam, or jumping out of that fully armed fighter jet as you play savior of human kind 2000 years into the future. A new study by the University of Montreal suggests a link between numbers of hours spent playing action games and the loss of grey matter in the hippocampus; which is correlated with neurological and psychological disorders to include dementia and bouts of depression.
The Canadian study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that video game players rely on the reward system of the brain, an area known as the caudate nucleus in order to navigate the virtual world much more than the brain's spatial memory system or hippocampus. This is what leads to loss of grey matter, low functional brain activity in this area, and increased susceptibility to developing mental illness. Previous studies have also seen the caudate nucleus being implicated in drug addiction and alcohol abuse.
This study tested twenty six adult gamers, and thirty three non-gamers. The players were spending at the very least, six hours per week playing games. The brain waves and eye movements of each player were recorded as they proceeded to navigate their way through a maze of mountains and trees in a kind of scavenger hunt. The gamers were two times more likely to use their caudate nucleus while navigating compared to non-gamers who relied more heavily on their hippocampus.
Dr Gregory West, of the University of Montreal, said: "Past research has shown people who rely on caudate nucleus dependent strategies have lower grey matter and functional brain activity in the hippocampus. "This means people who play a lot of action video games could have reduced hippocampal integrity, which is associated with increased risk for neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease."
Worldwide people spend approximately three billion hours per week playing video games with the average twenty one year old already having racked up an amazing 10,000 hours by the time they get to this age. The age where they are now legally able to purchase and consume alcohol within the United States. With the brain already trained and molded to rely on the caudate nucleus by this time, we could be only now looking in the right direction as to one of the main reasons alcohol and drug addiction has risen so high in the past decade. Could video gaming be this dangerous? Though we may not have that answer now. What is clear is that there is much more work to be done by scientists to flesh out the real impacts of video gaming on the brain, as some would say this study raises more questions than answers.
Video describing recent study by Canadian research group on the effects of video gaming on the brain. This short clip describes the regions of the brain that are affected and an explanation of the findings.
Source: The Telegraph, Medical News Today, Douglas
