Report: Video Games Hurt Your Brain
- July 08, 2002 14:37 PM PST
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More than two hours a day affects the bit of your brain that controls your personality, according to a new study. No wonder we don't have any friends.
A new study announced today indicates that excess game playing may have adverse effects on your brain. The study, led by Professor Akio Mori of Nihon University and published in today's Mainichi Shimbun newspaper in Japan, showed that playing video games for extended periods of time?more than two hours every day?caused reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that controls emotional and creative behavior.The study monitored brain-wave activity in 240 Japanese men and women, ranging from six to 29 years old, as they played games for differing amounts of time. The test subjects that spent the least amount of time on video games exhibited large amounts of beta waves, indicating strong prefrontal cortex activity. People that played games from one to three hours a day three or four days a week had beta levels about on par with alpha levels, indicating reduced activity in the cortex, while those that played every day for over two hours at a time had nearly zero cortex activity at all.
In his report, Mori hypothesized that most games only exercise players' reflexive and perceptive abilities, leaving the rest of the brain idle in the process. "Many games strive to instigate feelings of nervousness or terror, leading to fears that they could affect the autonomous behavior of players," cautioned Mori in the report. "[Parents] should pay close attention to the type of games they let their children play and how much time they spend playing them." The report will be publicly unveiled at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting this fall in Orlando.
