In today's video with the help of the cadavers here in the lab,
we're going to take a look at three of the coolest things that action video games do
to change your brain. It's going to be a fun one. Let's do this!
Now, the most obvious statement of the day, there are many different types of
video games. You have real-time strategy games, role playing games, puzzle games, so on and so
forth. In fact, you can even mix them together to create extremely challenging yet still fun video
game experiences, but each of them are going to come with their own positive effects on the
brain as well as their own negative effects and I decided to focus today's video on the positive
effects because the negative ones are pretty well established and also tends to be more or less all
you hear about these days, but we will definitely address those negative effects in a later video.
But today, we're specifically going to be focusing on action games or what should more probably
appropriately be called shooter games. So, this is going to be things like Call of Duty or Halo
and the first thing they do that's amazing is they improve your attention allocation.
You are looking at the right hemisphere of the human brain. Now, I want to give you a really
brief tour of the area so you have a generalized idea as to the function of the different regions.
So, right here, we're looking at the frontal lobe or the frontal cortex. Now, this is going to be
in charge of a lot of different things such as your personality which includes morality,
empathy, as well as just rational decision making but it also includes your motor cortex.
Then, behind it, we have the parietal lobe or the parietal cortex. Now, this is going to have
a lot of incoming information going into it to be processed from various parts of your body. So,
if you poke your arm, well, that is going to process, that sensation in your parietal cortex.
This area here is called the temporal lobe or temporal cortex and this is where auditory
processing occurs. So the sound of my voice right now coming out of what I imagine to be your phone
is going to be processed in the temporal lobe. And then behind it right here, we have the
occipital lobe or the occipital cortex. And this is where the visual processing is going to occur.
So while you're watching this video right now,
I am technically in the back of your head as creepy, as that may sound.
Now, when it comes to attention allocation. What that means is choosing what to focus your
attention on. Right now you're choosing to, hopefully, focus your attention on the phone
or on this video that you're watching but there's a lot of other things happening around you
that you are choosing to ignore. Well, what they find is that gamers who play shooter games
have - they're better. They're more efficient at allocating their attention. So, think about it.
If you're playing a shooter game like Call of Duty, there's going to be a lot of flashes and
sounds. So, what's going to be happening is the visual courtesies as well as the temporal
courtesies are going to be firing like crazy and they're going to have to be communicating with the
frontal cortex to determine how to prioritize which the flashes, which of the sounds, right?
There's so many different things all happening at once and what that does is it just makes
them more efficient. Now, they've actually done brain imaging on gamers who play shooter games
and found that they have actually less blood flow going to the area. There's
less activity happening in this which sounds counterintuitive. You think
it's - if you know, you're playing a shooter game and so much is happening that the brain is going
to be firing like crazy trying to, you know, compensate but instead, it's more efficient.
The areas are more efficiently communicating with one another making more meaning there's
less activity. It's absolutely cool. Gamers are just really good at keeping their attention and
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Next on our list is a higher spatial resolution with visual processing. Now,
I know that sounds wordy but you could think of spatial resolution as it pertains to the human
visual system just being how much detail can you see as you're looking at something
and there's a lot that goes into it - how much light is present? How much contrast
is there? What's the density and type of the photo receptors
in different aspects of your eye? There's a - again, a lot that goes into it but for humans,
the longer you look at something without moving your eyes, the more detail you're able to see.
Now, I have an experiment for you that you can do there at home
and all you gotta do is focus on something around you. You can pause the video if you'd
like and just focus on something around you and do everything within your power
to not move your eyes, and what you'll notice is more and more detail will start to emerge.
Now, obviously, there's a limit to this. It's not as though you could stare at
something and all of a sudden your eyes turn into microscopes but it's absolutely cool to
see that when your eyes aren't moving, you can extract more detail. As amazing as that is,
it's even better in gamers that play shooter games. And it's not all that surprising you
think again with all they have to focus on and they're draw their attention to,
or when they're focusing on an area, they need to extract as much detail about them.
You don't know, maybe there's a sniper or something. You're pinned down and you're trying
to determine the location of a sniper. You may not be moving your eyes all that much given what
you're looking at on the screen and you're able to extract more detail from what you're seeing.
Now, neurologically, if we go back to this brain here, this is pretty much happening
within the occipital cortex and the parietal cortex and what's happening
is there's various visual pathways that are communicating within the occipital cortex
and also going into that parietal cortex.
So basically, it's just firing going back and forth and all throughout and the brain
is just - for gamers that play shooter games that is
more efficient. Again, it's just better at talking to itself.
And last on our list is an enhanced ability to mentally rotate objects. And again, this
is probably going to make ton of sense. Picture yourself in a shooter game and maybe you're
lobbying grenades and as you're throwing them, you have to mentally picture what's on the other side
or maybe you're running through a map and you're jumping in all these different places and you're
coming up to something that you actually can't see but your mind has to, again, rotate the map around
so that you land in the right area. There's an infinite amount of ways we can, you know, think
about this. It just makes a ton of sense that gamers would have an improved ability at this.
And this mental rotational ability happens between three of the different cortexes. It
happens between the temporal cortex, the parietal cortex as well as the occipital cortex. And look,
you can do an experiment right now at home. Um, I often do this with my students to kind
of show them what their own limitations with their mental ability to rotate objects are.
So, go ahead and close your eyes and I want you to picture say your house or wherever you live.
Can you picture that building from the outside as though you're a bird flying over... Now, can you
start spinning your house around? Could you rotate it upside down, right? And you can keep on going
with this thought experiment to see just how good you are at rotating these mental objects. I often
describe it to my students as an architect's brain, right? Would you be able to build and
deconstruct things all in your mind? Well, if you can, then, maybe you'd make a great architect.
Well, it just goes to show that shooter gamers have an improve ability at this
when compared to those who do not play shooter video games. Absolutely fascinating.
Now, while I only discuss three of these positive things that happen to the brain
from playing video games, I just want to remind you there are a ton of other positives
that happen to the brain and even other parts of your body but there again,
there are also a lot of negatives that happen to your brain and other parts of your body.
I want you to know that this is the first part in a series of videos that I want to do that's
exploring what video games do for the mind and body and the reason why I'm doing this is not
because I myself don't really play a ton of video games. As much as I'm interested in
things like virtual reality, augmented reality and things that are definitely in the pipeline
that are going to be coming down that all of us are going to be participating in.
So, for me, understanding what video games do to the brain is just super interesting
because I know it's going to play a role in how technology starts just merging more and more
that are everyday life but I really hope you enjoy today's video. Again,
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won't look like Justin with his preceding hairline or pretty much absent hairline. But, as always,
be sure to like, comment, subscribe if you feel so inclined and I will see you in the next video.