Gamers display increased brain activity and better decision-making capability.

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Gamers display increased brain activity and better decision-making capability.

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Researchers discovered in a recent study that those who regularly play video games have stronger sensorimotor decision-making abilities and greater brain activity than those who don't. The authors of the study came to the conclusion that video games might be used to teach people how to make judgments based on what they observe after using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), which was used in the study.

We still don’t know if playing video games is good for young people’s thinking and decision-making, according to the study’s lead author, associate professor Mukesh Dhamala of Georgia State University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and Neuroscience Institute. In this regard, their work provides some explanations.

Video games can be used to train people in skills like making wise judgments and improving their mood if the right brain networks have been identified.

Tim Jordan, who contributed to the paper, provided a personal illustration of how Dhamala’s suggestion that people use video games to train their brains can be made possible by this research.

Jordan was born with one eye that had limited eyesight. He graduated from Georgia State University in 2021, with a doctorate in physics and astronomy. When he was about five years old, he was urged to cover his good eye and participate in a study to enhance the eyesight in his weak eye. Jordan is legally blind in one eye, but he still plays paintball and lacrosse. He claims that his superior visual processing capacity is the reason behind this. He is a postdoctoral researcher at UCLA right now.

Current study.

There were 47 volunteers in the Georgia State University study who were college-aged. 28 of them regularly played video games, whereas 19 did not.

The participants saw a cue, and then a screen with moving dots while seated in an FMRI machine with a mirror. Participants were instructed to press a button with either their right or left hand to decide which direction the dots were moving. If nothing happened, they were instructed not to hit either button.

According to the study, those that play video games react more quickly and correctly.

Following brain scan analysis revealed higher levels of activity between certain brain regions.

These findings, according to the authors, suggest that playing video games may enhance a number of emotional, perceptual, and action-mapping subprocesses that influence decision-making. These findings start to illuminate how playing video games alter the brain to enhance task performance, as well as its potential implications for enhancing task-specific activity.

The study discovered that there was also no trade-off between speed and accuracy in video games. Video game players performed higher in both categories. This allowed them to conclude that playing them is a fantastic approach to practise cognitive decision-making.


Story Source: Original press release by Georgia State University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length by Scible News.


Reference

Jordan, T., & Dhamala, M. (2022). Video game players have improved decision-making abilities and enhanced brain activities. Neuroimage: Reports, 2(3), 100112. doi:10.1016/j.ynirp.2022.100112

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