A new study has found that adolescents who play violent video games may exhibit lingering effects on brain function, including increased activity in the region of the brain that governs emotional arousal and decreased activity in the brain’s executive function, which is associated with control, focus and concentration. The findings were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
“Our study suggests that playing a certain type of violent video game may have different short-term effects on brain function than playing a nonviolent–but exciting–game,” said Vincent P. Mathews, M.D.
Dr. Mathews and colleagues randomly assigned 44 adolescents to play either a violent video game or a nonviolent video game for 30 minutes. The researchers then used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study brain function during a series of tasks measuring inhibition and concentration. One test used emotional stimuli and one did not.
fMRI measures the tiny metabolic changes that occur when a part of the brain is active. These changes will appear as a brightly colored area on the MR image, indicating the part of the brain that is being used to process the task. The two groups did not differ in accuracy or reaction time for the tasks, but analysis of the fMRI data showed differences in brain activation.
Compared with the group that played the nonviolent game, the group that played the violent video game demonstrated less activation in the prefrontal portions of the brain, which are involved in inhibition, concentration and self-control, and more activation in the amygdala, which is involved in emotional arousal.
“During tasks requiring concentration and processing of emotional stimuli, the adolescents who had played the violent video game showed distinct differences in brain activation than the adolescents who played an equally exciting and fun–but nonviolent–game,” Dr. Mathews said. “Because of random assignment, the most likely factor accounting for these differences would be the group to which the volunteers were assigned.”
Who woulda thunk it?
So let me get this straight. Violent Video Games are turning us into females?
No suprise here, I think, considering what the possibilities for the violent game might be. Just confirms the obvious.
For most people, when you play a game like Doom 3 or F.E.A.R, I think it’s quite obvious that emotion runs higher. You may be frightened, or feel stressed to defeat your enemies with what you might feel are limited resources. In all types of games with violence (and most types of games period) there is some kind of struggle for resources, some objective you have to complete and you only have so much of X and Y resource to do it with. In a violent game that is things like your health, your ammunition, whatnot, and the *urgency* of violence demands your immediate emotional reaction rather than calculation.
In a competetive multiplayer game of that same type, like Quake 3, if you are inexpereinced you may become frustrated at your inability and start reacting with your emotions rather than thinking carefully with your head how you will succeed. Violence is an immediate thing that doesn’t leave a lot of time for calculation.
Only when you are used to it or mentally prepared for it (such as in the case of experienced players or professional players who are very calculating about the whole thing) does the emotional factor decline.
>>So let me get this straight. Violent Video Games are turning
>>us into females?
Not only are they turning us into females, but because the video-induced arousal takes place at the expense of playground activities, ithey’re turning us into FAT females.
I hate the Medal Of Honor series! Nothing can ruin a FPS game more than watching a bomb land on a crowd of soldiers and instead of bits and pieces of them flying into the air, the f**king soldiers just faint.
If they could make interactive games Less violent, and more interesting, it would be wonderful.
But making a real life senerio, can be hard.
Make a game with interactions, minor killings, and more fun and games then anything….But will it take/happen.
Look at Wow. Its become a BIG business. but you have to group, and do a few things.
Make it harder to GAIN, and more interaction. Or add GAIN to interaction.
TEACh them somehthing…
Math, science, discovery, Learn how to talk to each other and not piss others off….Learning, Using your brain, find NEW ideas…Prove your OWN ideas..
College football does that, too.