Study Shows Video Game Players Have Enhanced Brain Activity and Decision-Making Skills

video game players

A study conducted by researchers at the Georgia State University shows that video game players have superior decision-making skills and enhanced activity in key areas of the brain.

The writers of the study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) to support their study claiming that video games could be a useful tool for enhancing emotive decision-making skills.

Lead researcher for the study, Mukesh Dhamala had this to say.

Video games are played by the overwhelming majority of our youth more than three hours every week, but the beneficial effects on decision-making abilities and the brain are not exactly known. Our work provides some answers on that, video game playing can effectively be used for training — for example, decision-making efficiency training and therapeutic interventions — once the relevant brain networks are identified.

The research project has 47 late-teen participants, 28 of whom were gamers and 19 were non-gamers.

The participants had to lay inside an FMRI machine that had a mirror, allowing them to see a cue followed by a display of moving dots. The volunteers were asked to press a button on their left or right hand to show what directions the dots were moving, or not to press either button if there was no movement.

As a result, the video game players turned out to be faster and had more accurate responses. Analysis of the brain scans discovered that the differences were related to enhanced activity in parts of the brain. The study also mentioned that video game players were more precise on both measures.

The authors wrote:

These results indicate that video game playing potentially enhances several of the subprocesses for sensation, perception and mapping to action to improve decision-making skills. These findings begin to illuminate how video game playing alters the brain in order to improve task performance and their potential implications for increasing task-specific activity.

Maybe, this will convince parents that video games aren’t bad after all.

Source: Science Direct

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