Playing action video games may be bad for your brain – loss of grey matter

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/shooting-video-games-health-1.4237361

by rhschan • 9 years ago

68 64 9 years ago

wow imagine if john carmack hadn't played all those videogames

giblaz• 9 years ago

I get the feeling software engineers are going to end up net positive in grey matter regardless of their gaming habits just because of the nature of the job.

nerpderp832• 9 years ago

I never got the idea that Carmack plays games much, he mostly creates them.

QAPereo• 9 years ago

Non-sensationalist headline:

A subsequent randomised longitudinal training experiment demonstrated that first-person shooting games reduce grey matter within the hippocampus in participants using non-spatial memory strategies.

And the rest of it, which changes the whole character of the article...

Conversely, participants who use hippocampus-dependent spatial strategies showed increased grey matter in the hippocampus after training. A control group that trained on 3D-platform games displayed growth in either the hippocampus or the functionally connected entorhinal cortex. A third study replicated the effect of action video game training on grey matter in the hippocampus. These results show that video games can be beneficial or detrimental to the hippocampal system depending on the navigation strategy that a person employs and the genre of the game.

http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp201715...

Interesting study, terrible article.

malkia• 9 years ago

TLDR - Video Games are acting like "grapefruit" to the hippocampus.

karlkatzke• 9 years ago

So does that mean that people who play games that have maps and that keep the maps in their heads develop grey matter, but people who just blindly run around the map and don't learn where things are will lose grey matter?

What games DON'T require spatial memory? I'm having a hard time thinking of one.

xeromal• 9 years ago

Plants vs zombies

tedajax• 9 years ago

A lot of modern games that offer convenience features like GPS navigation in GTA or the quest markers in Skyrim. I prefer playing GTA with the GPS turned off because it forces me to actually learn the lay of the land.

jedahan• 9 years ago

I lot of single player campaign FPSs (with or without arena sections) are railroady, not requiring map knowledge.

celticninja• 9 years ago

Also, isn't running around blindly how you learn a map? I know that's how I 'trained' myself on CoD4 until I knew the maps inside out. So was I killing grey matter before creating it?

AnotXOR• 9 years ago

Wondering this as well. Most games do use spacial memory although some shooters are pretty mindless and navigating requires very little thought or effort (think Diablo 3's more linear maps where it's see enemy, shoot, move forward, see enemy, shoot, move forward, etc).

It seems to me like games like Portal / Talos Principle / Amnesia would rely on spacial memory more than most games out there. Can anyone confirm or deny if this hypothesis is correct?

KirinDave2• 9 years ago

I think folks overestimate the quality of many gamers.

Especially if players don't take time to gain a degree of mastery with the game and move from title to title.

FRex2• 9 years ago

Thief 1, 2 and their fan missions require a lot more spatial memory and awareness than modern titles. Similarly with System Shock 1 and 2.

hackinthebochs• 9 years ago

I remember reading a study about different navigation strategies. In one strategy you developed a mental map of the area and you mentally navigated that map as a means to navigate the real world. Another strategy was the landmark strategy where you would learn procedural directions between landmarks and so navigation relied much less on mental maps and much more on procedural memory. I suspect these different strategies are at play in the responses noted in the study.

d23• 9 years ago

I played a lot of video games growing up, particularly first person shooters. I feel like I just had an epiphany. I am incredibly terrible with direction sense in real life. I wonder if video games and relying on map overlays had something to do with it.

wyldfire• 9 years ago

participants who use hippocampus-dependent spatial strategies

My first questions were: "How was this measured/detected? How might I know whether I used these strategies when I play games?"

The answer from your Nature link is very detailed, too detailed to reproduce here. See the section titled, "4 on 8 virtual maze". IIUC they partitioned the groups into "spatial" vs "response" learners by determining whether they navigated a maze while using a memorized sequence of landmarks or without.

problems• 9 years ago

Interesting, I played a lot of PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds last weekend and this does bring a few things to mind: some FPSes are highly reliant upon twitch reactions and that sort of deep reptile brain panic response. It improves your reflexes and precision, but likely punishes higher order thinking.

Other games encourage you to plan long term and work within systems.

I think these exercise very different parts of your brain - is it possible there's simply a trade off here?

On the other hand, single player in call of duty is about the most mind numbing thing it's possible to play, there's no competition, it's just kill guys and advance in a straight line. Would be interesting to compare with more competitive or open world games.

icanhackit2• 9 years ago

I played a lot of PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds last weekend [...] It improves your reflexes and precision, but likely punishes higher order thinking.

I'd argue that spatial and temporal considerations are critical in PUBG. Sure, it's not real-time strategy kind of planning, but understanding your exposure to others based on elevation & movement speed, resource management, blue/white perimeter placement and strategy to get to the objective while avoiding enemy LOS does encourage higher order thinking.

jordiburgos• 9 years ago

Please, do this kind of analysis with every new.

tpaschalis• 9 years ago

In contrast, I would like to point out another research paper [0] about the possible "Cognitive benefits of computer games for older adults". I think that it's fascinating that we're living in a world of evolving, new art and entertainment forms.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4130645/

joshdance• 9 years ago

News articles about scientific studies may be wrong, misconstrued, misleading, or not statistically significant.

Froyoh• 9 years ago

I expected better from CBC.

kylestlb• 9 years ago

It would be interesting to study what other activities trigger 'response learning' - I would imagine most sports?

RodericDay• 9 years ago

In my experience, FPS enthusiasts do tend to manifest some pretty bad traits that are less common among other types of gamers. Interesting.

Especially stuff related to "race realism" and various forms of sexism.

thrownblown• 9 years ago

When the PUBG lobby gets to racist for my liking, my favorite thing to do is play the NPR Politics Podcast on the All Chat channel, or VOX Weeds.

Its like kryptonite to the shit spewing gamer bros.

Juz162• 9 years ago

I'm surprised people don't just mute you for making so much noise in voice chat. That's what I do whenever someone plays music or other irrelevant stuff on their mic.

Fifer822• 9 years ago

I will never forget being verbally abused for the first time on xmas day 1996 Doom Deathmatch. Funny stuff, about 2 minutes of insults and death threats.

The sad thing is nowadays this is bullying, sexist, racist, trolling and so on. It just made me laugh. I think the trash talk was always in this community.

drngdds2• 9 years ago

I think the trash talk was always in this community.

This seems true, considering John Gabriel formulated his Greater Internet F*ckwad Theory[0] way back in 2004. But it's not a good thing. Some people just want to play video games without being subjected to racist, sexist, and ableist harassment.

[0] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

abootstrapper• 9 years ago

It was bullying, sexist, racist, trolling back then too.

icebraining2• 9 years ago

The whole matchmaking concept made that much worse. In the server model one can find a well moderated server that kicked those idiots out.

thrillgore• 9 years ago

It may just be me, but I've never had any issue with profane public lobbies playing either Destiny or Overwatch. I don't even need to mute it, typically there's little or any chatter.

If I have a party on PS4 or am on my usual Mumble lounge its typically by the book raid planning. I've seen videos of really inappropriate and childish banter on other games so I know how bad it can get.

knowaveragejoe• 9 years ago

IMO, those types of games tend to attract more of those types of people. Your comment reads as though it encourages those traits to manifest themselves in people. I play a lot of FPS and know what you're talking about, but I don't see how the games themselves are encouraging that so much as attracting people already pre-disposed to those beliefs.

DKnoll• 9 years ago

That's not in any way related to the article and also prejudicial without evidence, just like the two 'isms' you mentioned. Interesting.

Dirlewanger• 9 years ago

Shitty anecdote to counteract your own shitty anecdote: the most corrosive community I've ever encountered were those of MOBAs. Smite, League of Legends, DOTA 2, I've never seen such rage before in any FPSs.

setr2• 9 years ago

It really makes sense; moba's require a much greater dependence on your allies' ability than most FPS games do, so they're naturally much more sensitive to it. The key thing that drives it is that

1. One, or multiple, bad teamates make the match not at all fun (because the game snowbals heavily)

2. It wastes an 30-60 min of your time on a match predetermined to lose

3. The games are primarily played with randoms, and the matchmaking system has never been any good (starting from the original kick anyone who has to dl the game in wc3)

4. Player age ranges drastically, and younger players tend to be both worse and prone to raging (often fueled by their own misplays)

And you always get people who are relentlessly trying to avoid any kind of contention, which is more irritating than anything else.

FPS games really only feature points 3 & 4, as they're predominantly solo experiences (except by taunting the enemy).

But, imo, these things are both natural to the way games are designed, and really are not as bad as made out to be. Its an inherent piece of the games, and anyone going in with antithetical ideals is simply trying to play a different game (which is what the LoL anti-toxic developers pull, consistently misunderstanding the game in terms of its community, design and balance, as they try to rip apart the game to meet their ideals).

neverminder• 9 years ago

So what about strategy games then, such as Civilization?

Aissen• 9 years ago

I'll be right back, I'll go spend 4 years with two full time jobs, and dozens of training groups in order to answer this question. And then I'll have a non-definitive, very specific answer you probably didn't expect and which will raise more questions than it answers. Science is hard.

Juz162• 9 years ago

From the study: http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/mp201715...

For example, real time strategy games such as Rise of Nations have been shown to have positive effects on both visual attention and executive function.53 However, the impact of such real time strategy games on the hippocampus remains to be determined.

The study only looked at first person shooters like CoD: Modern Warfare 2 (action training) third person platformers like Mario 64 (mario training) and first person RPG shooters like Borderlands 2 (aRPG training). It only links to another study that allegedly looked at strategy games.

b_ttercup• 9 years ago

I think what they're describing isn't related to video games. It's just that using your brain a certain way makes it better at that type of task. The idea that playing Mario 64 improves the spatial reasoning isn't surprising because most levels are large and open and require spatial reasoning whereas first person shooters often featured tight, indoor corridors where the player cannot observe landmarks easily from different locations and must therefore hardcore directions into their memory.

adrianm• 9 years ago

The study is interesting but I find the term ‘action game’ too imprecise to actually be useful. Having just skimmed through the paper it seems like what they actually experimented with were highly linear games which require little to no perceptual mapping of the world into memory because you do not have to backtrack much or at all. But that is an artifact of that particular games linear level design, it has nothing to do with ‘action’.

hashberry2• 9 years ago

It's more than video games:

- Becoming pregnant reduces grey matter[0].

- Watching porn reduces grey matter[1].

- Heavy use of Facebook reduces grey matter[2].

- Tweeting while watching TV reduces grey matter[3]. etc etc etc.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/pregnancy-brain-mean...

[1] http://www.iflscience.com/brain/researchers-find-association...

[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166432817...

[3] https://www.fastcompany.com/3036198/people-who-jump-from-scr...

FRex2• 9 years ago

Coming soon: living reduces grey matter?

crocal• 9 years ago

Coming sooner: dying reduces grey matter. What? Zombies?

hashberry2• 9 years ago

Yep. Teens (ages 13-8) lose 1 percent of their grey matter every year[0].

[0] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/work...

Danihan• 9 years ago

Replying to comments.... does something can't remember..

such_a_casual• 9 years ago

I'll take my chances clickbait.

shahbaby• 9 years ago

"After 90 hours of playing first-person shooter games..."

90 hours in the gym @ 3 hours / week = 7.5 months of exercise

At this point one expect to see physical changes in the mirror.

Why would it be any different in the brain?

A much broader implication may be that dedicating around 90 hours to something is the point at which your brain will start to show physical signs of adaptation.

unabridged• 9 years ago

From the study:

"Thirteen first-person shooting games from the Call of Duty, Battlefield, Killzone, Medal of Honor and Resistance: Fall of Man series were chosen based on their highly similar gameplay tasks and demands. Participants only played the single player campaigns and did not play any multiplayer components of the games."

Single player for most of these games is very boring and requires little thinking. They need to add another category to this study where they are playing competitive multiplayer fps. Maybe even specifically strategy game types like capture the flag.

icanhackit2• 9 years ago

Agreed. The thrill of playing real opponents who quickly learn from patterns in your behaviour forces you to constantly adjust while also observing their unique behaviours which can be used to your own advantage. Far more challenging and requires on-the-fly tactics and strategies. I'd be quite surprised if multiplayer games didn't lead to more brain matter.

Playing action video games may be bad for your brain – loss of grey matter

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