While parents might dog their kids for playing too many video games, a new study shows there’s some benefit to those long hours gaming.
Researchers from Georgia State University say gamers boast “superior sensorimotor decision-making skills” and have more activity in key regions of their brains compared to those who don’t game.
For the small study’s lead author, Tim Jordan, it was personal: He suffered from poor vision in one eye in his youth and was prescribed playing video games while wearing a patch on his strong eye. The cheat code worked: his vision improved.
The scientists in this case used MRIs to watch the brain activities of two groups of subjects: those who game in their regular lives and those who do not.
Both sets of test subjects were tasked with clicking various buttons depending on the appearance and movement of dots on a screen. Those who gamed were aces at the task, which tested their speed at making decisions and their accuracy.
Mukesh Dhamala, associate professor in Georgia State’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the school’s Neuroscience Institute, said in a university release, “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.”
Dhamala adds, “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.”