According to recent research by Georgia State University scientists, those who play video games frequently have better sensorimotor decision-making abilities and are more active in some parts of the brain than those who don’t.
The study’s authors, who employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), said the results point to the possibility of using video games as a training aid for perceptual decision-making. ‘Video games are played by the overwhelming majority of our youth for more than three hours every week, but the beneficial effects on decision-making abilities and the brain are not exactly known,’ said lead researcher Mukesh Dhamala, associate professor in Georgia State’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the university’s Neuroscience Institute.
‘Our work provides some answers to that,’ Dhamala said. ‘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.’
Dhamala advised Tim Jordan, the paper’s lead author, who provided a personal example of how such a study could guide the use of video games for brain training. Jordan, who graduated from Georgia State University in 2021 with a Ph.D. in physics and astronomy, was born with poor vision in one eye. He was asked to cover his good eye and play video games as part of a research project when he was around 5 to improve the eyesight in his weak eye. Jordan attributes his ability to move from being legally blind in one eye to developing a great capacity for visual processing, which finally allowed him to play lacrosse and paintball. He is currently a UCLA postdoctoral researcher.
There were 47 college-aged participants in the Georgia State study, of whom 28 were classified as frequent video game players and 19 as non-players. The participants lay inside an FMRI machine equipped with a mirror so they could view a cue followed by a display of moving dots. In order to identify the direction the dots were moving, participants were asked to click a button on either their right or left hand. If there was no directional movement, they were instructed to refrain from touching either button. According to the study, people who play video games respond more quickly and accurately. Analysis of the resulting brain scans found that the differences were correlated with enhanced activity in certain parts of the brain. ‘These results indicate that video game playing potentially enhances several of the subprocesses for sensation, perception, and mapping to action to improve decision-making skills,’ the authors wrote. ‘These findings begin to illuminate how video game playing alters the brain in order to improve task performance and their potential implications for increasing task-specific activity.’