Playing video games may actually harm your brain. New study in news.

[Noomz]

Link to study.

http://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/art...rm-your-brain/







Quoted the most interesting parts but the whole thing is in the link. I find this interesting because it may confirm a lot, to me at least. And it's something I've learned over the past 20 years I've been playing games. Some video games that have no substance and just reward you over and over again for doing basically nothing may harm your brain. You don't learn anything new from these games, you don't do anything. You just do the same repetitive tasks over and over again for the same rewards in Call of Duty.

Meanwhile in a 3d adventure game like Dark Souls or some of the Older 3d Mario games you learn map layouts, enemy layouts. Object layouts. Landmarks. It's also interesting to see how many different games have made maps of Manhattan and how I'm able to run around it and know where everything is without looking at the map at all. Since I live near manhattan and go there every few months it's good to just walk around the city without any directions to find where I need to go. Everything is already in my head and memorized.

The thing is with this study is that it isn't attacking video games as a whole. It's not saying video games cause violence/sexism. It's saying that video games may help your brain function better. Which is why I believe this study has more credibility than anything out there that's come out to openly attack video games for being mindless toys that rot your brain away.

" Ninety hours of playing action games led to hippocampal atrophy in response learners, while 90 hours of playing 3D games led to increased grey matter within the hippocampal memory system of all participants."

How the hell can you measure that from a mere 90 hours? That's nothing. It'd be like your brain is literally shrinking in your head. There's no way this is accurate. It doesn't even show their sample size for crying out loud. There's more questions than answers here. It also assumes that FPS games don't involve planning or spatial awareness, which is complete bullshit.

[Mister Cheese]

See your grandfather's gore after he commits suicide. Tell me that video games 'desensitized' you.

Go ahead. Tell me that you could look on that and not lose your lunch.

Tell me that for a second you could be cold and 'unfeeling' after something like that and I'll call you a liar.

What the fuck does that have to do with the article?

[Yvaelle]

Specifically, patients with Parkinson’s disease combined with dementia, as well as those with Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, depression or PTSD – all of whom have less grey matter in their hippocampus

habitual players of action games have less grey matter in their hippocampus, a major part of the brain.
And the more depleted the hippocampus becomes, the more a person is at risk of developing brain illnesses and diseases ranging from depression to schizophrenia, PTSD and Alzheimer's disease.

To establish which participants were spatial learners (that is, those who favoured their hippocampus)

We then followed that up with two longitudinal studies to establish causality, and we found that it was indeed the gaming that led to changes in the brain."

I think most of the key elements of this study are described in the above quotes.

The first issue I see is just a gut feeling, but they are making the claims
a) that spatial learners have more grey matter in their hippocampus, and that
b) spatial learners are better at video games, and that
c) habitual action gamers have less grey matter in their hippocampus

Would it not follow that habitual gamers of action games are then worse at video games than non-gamers? My gut says something is wrong with the logic here - because my anecdotal experience is the opposite - gamers not only are better at action games than non-gamers (could be explained by experience), they learn other new games faster (suggesting improved neural structures for spatial problem solving).

Yet part of their work suggests the opposite, that people who play fewer games (less grey-matter-in-hippocampus deterioration) should be innately superior to habitual gamers (grey-matter-in-hippocampus still intact).

Granted, it's my anecdotal experience versus their empirical evidence, but I am very skeptical of their entire body of work here if it's based on a premise which seems to fly counter to my own anecdotal experience, the popular consensus, common sense, and all other neuro-scientific work (that I am aware) on action games improving problem solving.


My second issue is with the conclusion based on assumptions that:
a) patients with (disorders below) have less grey matter in their hippocampus, and
b) action gamers lose grey matter in their hippocampus causally because of habitual gaming behaviour, therefore
= habitual action gaming both leads to, and worsens the conditions of, Parkinson's, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, depression and PTSD.

I see no reason to believe this is a causal relationship between any of these disorders and loss of grey matter. Loss of grey matter in the hippocampus due to those disorders could very easily be a correlation or second-order effect, not a causal relationship: losing grey matter may not effect any of the above, even if they result in lost grey matter. Losing grey matter in the hippocampus may not result in, or worsen, any of the above - even if we assume they are correct that all of those conditions also result in loss of grey matter in the hippocampus.

Further, it's also possible that a loss of grey matter relative to the size of the hippocampus may mean that grey matter is not useful for problem solving, therefore the non-grey-matter portions of the hippocampus are growing: reducing the grey matter percentage in gamers. So they need to be very careful that they are taking precise, absolute measurements of the hippocampus, controlling for all variables possible, and only drawing conclusions based on the absolute increase/decrease in grey matter mass, not a percentage relative to the overall size of the hippocampus (which would indicate a reallocation of resources to other structures, not necessarily an absolute decline in mass). For that, I would at the least need to see their data.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

French people did the study? Yeah, no.

When they beat the Nazi's they can tell me how bad video games are.

I came for the shit post and I was not disappointed.

[McTroll]

See your grandfather's gore after he commits suicide. Tell me that video games 'desensitized' you.

Go ahead. Tell me that you could look on that and not lose your lunch.

Tell me that for a second you could be cold and 'unfeeling' after something like that and I'll call you a liar.

Geez, who peed in your Corn Flakes? If reading an article makes you THAT defensive, I wouldn't want to see you offended!

[PhantasmagoriaX]

@Mister Cheese

Here is something saying the complete opposite, granted its just about Tetris and PTSD but as a fellow PTSD sufferer I found it to be quite helpful.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...nd-flashbacks/

[Baine]

French people did the study? Yeah, no.

When they beat the Nazi's they can tell me how bad video games are.

You are from Boston and you do not even know Montréal is in Québec, Canada?