Possible Issues for Brain Evolution of Palying Video Games
The human brain contains billions of nerves that link it to various body parts making it the most complex body organ. It supports proper functioning of muscles in doing body movements, and administers the development of various areas of human life.
It was found out that the male brain is always 10% larger than female brains in almost all stages of life. When people reach age six, the brain is 95% as big as an adult brain. However, these sizes tell nothing on how developed the brain is. Though a six-year old child can have as big a brain as a full-grown adult, it does not mean that the child has the same level of thinking as the adult. Brain development peaks during puberty stage.
If the adolescent does lot of sports during puberty, most brain cells will be configured in that thinking. Similar cell behavior occurs for musical and academic activities. But video games seem to be the most prevalent activity for adolescents during this stage.
Effects of video games to brain advancement already grabbed attention from researchers. In early studies done during 1980s, only minimal correlations were found, and most have contradicting results. These results have helped little during that time but assisted present studies to achieve better outputs.
Only some part of the brain were observed to have significant response to video games based from recent studies by Japanese researchers. Those portions are greatly responsible for vision and movement. On the other hand, the biggest brain segment devoted to emotion and intellect known as the frontal lobe, did not show significant development.
Through digital imaging techniques, researchers were able to see brain portions being used in real-time. In the test, one group was made to play video games while another group was to undergo Kraepelin test wherein one-digit numbers are to be added for a certain period of time. The first group showed brain activities and usage in parts concerned for vision and movement. The second group exhibited extensive brain usage for both left and right hemisphere, though the only segment needed for mathematical computation is the left hemisphere.
Further studies revealed that number exercises are more stimulating than music. Reading was also observed to have brain usage for the frontal lobe.
Brain cells might have poor quality as the person gets older if the frontal lobe will be given minimal usage during its development peak in adolescence stage. Recent observations caused the worry of underperformance in intellectual aspect for the next generation. This is the most dreaded scenario by the researchers.
Reactions were given by common gamers and students alike regarding the study. For example, the study did not specify the game genre used in research. Tactical and strategy games that require multi-tasking capabilities might require more than vision and movement skills. Some interesting games to study might be used halo 3 odst or cheap street fighter 4. To find out what games are the best for different types of skills you can use xbox game reviews as a reference. For some gamers, they were still able to perform good in academics while maintaining their gaming skills and activities, while the effects of video games seem to affect emotional areas of some gamers. For such cases, this study might have opened another interesting topic about games – its effect on emotional development.