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Do Good Video Gamers Have Bigger Brains?

by JP Mangalindan on January 22, 2010 at 08:23 AM

We've known for a while now that video games can make players sharper, but only recently have scientists reached a better understanding of what specific parts of the brain actually affect our gaming aptitude.

In a recent study, researchers at the University of Illinois focused on an area of the brain called the striatum, which had been shown in past research with animals to serve as a "learning machine" during habit formation and skill acquisition. To test whether or not the striatum is involved in playing video games, researchers mapped out the brains of 39 human subjects, aged 18 to 28, via MRI, and gave each subject 20 hours of training with an 'Asteroids'-inspired arcade game designed specifically for the study. During gameplay, some players were instructed to focus solely on getting a high score, while others juggled several goals.


Researchers found that a player who had a more developed part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens would pick up the game's intricacies more quickly. Meanwhile, a player with with a more developed caudate nucleus and putamen, other areas of the striatum, would do better at multi-tasking.

While the study does shed some light on the link between our brains and gaming abilities, Arizona State University professor James Gee thinks the study suffered from several problems. Firstly, the subjects were chosen for their relative lack of gaming (less than three hours of gameplay a week), but some of them could have been avid gamers when they were younger. Such past experience could potentially have affected the development of different areas of their brains, and, as a result, affect the outcomes of their achievements. Also, the customized game used for the study is a far cry from the complexity of say, 'Modern Warfare 2,' or even 'Mario Bros. Wii,' and might not be wholly representative of how we interact with most modern games.

Still, even Gee will admit it's a significant step in figuring out what makes gamers tick, even if it's a flawed one. [From: Cosmic Log]

Tags: biology, brain, gaming, science, study, top, video games, VideoGames

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