This Is Your Brain Online

How Video Games, Multitasking And Blogging Are Shaping The GenTech Brain

(CBS) 
Aggression researcher Bruce Bartholow adds that hundreds of studies have shown that people who are exposed to media violence become more aggressive.

Bartholow, a psychologist at the University of Missouri, likens the state of research to that of tobacco research in the '50s and '60s. The link between smoking and cancer was apparent, he says, but "while scientific evidence was mounting suggesting a link, the nicotine industry consistently and loudly protested that the evidence was still unclear."

Bartholow recently finished a study that found young men who played a lot of violent video games were more aggressive and less sensitive to violence than those that played fewer violent games. In the study, he questioned them about on how often they played violent video games and then gave them two tests. In the first test, they were shown pictures of violent scenes, such as a man holding a knife to a woman's throat, and their brains' responses to the photos was measured. Bartholow found that the brain waves of the frequent game players showed less response than the ones who played less often.

In the second test, the men were told they were testing their reaction times against other participants, but they were really competing against a computer. When they won, they were given the chance the chance to blast their "opponents" with noise. The men who played more violent video games blasted their opponent with louder noises for longer durations then the men who played for fewer hours.

And these effects, the study found, didn't fade away a few minutes after turning off the PlayStation. "This effect is cumulative over time as people are playing these games on their own," he says. "It’s not just a short-term lab effect."

A study in Japan found that even non-violent games may increase aggression when played too often. Ryuta Kawashima at Tohoku University, found that excessive game playing may stunt development of the frontal lobes — including the cerebral cortex and its impulse control functions. Kawashima compared the brain activity of teens playing Nintendo games with that of teens doing arithmetic. He found that the Nintendo group only used the parts of the brain associated with vision and movement, while the math group had activity not only in the vision and movement areas, but throughout the frontal lobe — including the areas associated with learning, emotion, memory and impulse control. Kawashima argues that the study shows that teens who play video games at the expense of other activities, like math, reading aloud, or even just socializing or playing outside, will stunt their prefrontal cortex development end up more violent.

Other studies have shown that video games can be addictive, says Walsh. "One out of seven develop all of the behavioral traits of a chemical addiction," he says, such as lying about time spent playing, craving the game when they're not playing and letting game playing get in the way of personal relationships.

These are the kinds of questions that new methods of looking at the brain in action may be able to answer. But it's clear the answers will be complicated.

For example, potential ill effects of violence in video games that doesn't mean that they aren't educational or skill-building, argues Steven Johnson, author of "Everything Bad is Good For You."

Take one of the very worst of the worst — and most popular — video games: the "Grand Theft Auto" series. This series gives players the opportunity to massacre police offices with chainsaws and kill prostitutes for fun. It has such a reputation for violence, in fact, that last year the families of two murdered police personnel filed a suit against the game's makers, claiming that it led a teen to murder two police department workers by hardwiring his brain toward violent scenarios.

"Kids are psychologically rehearsing for theft," says Walsh. But Johnson argues that playing the game teaches such skills as problem solving, resource management, identifying patterns and planning.

Eugene Fiume, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto, points out that games are moving away from the "single shooter" model to multi-player collaborative games that allow much more room for creativity and cooperation.

In fact, a study at Cornell University suggests that IQs have been going up in recent decades because of computers, video games, television and the Internet. According to this study, today's teens' scores are about 25 points higher than their grandparents and 15 points higher than their parents.

There are plenty of studies that show that video games, even violent ones, can improve visual and motor skills — useful for athletics, driving, and the military. And psychologists Mike Posner and Mary K. Rothbart at the University of Oregon, found that specially designed games can even improve impulse control in children.

"The real take-home message for me," says Craig Anderson, a psychologist who researches the effects of media violence at Iowa State University, "is that a well-constructed video game is an excellent teaching tool. But what it teaches depends on the content of the game."

---

Want to comment on this story? Want to see what other readers think? Click here.

---