In What Ways Do Video Games Affect The Brain?

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Different perspectives and misconceptions regarding video games have circulated among the society in the past years. Statements such as “video games damage the brain”, “video games have a strong impact on a child’s brain”, and “video games can bring out an individual’s violent potentials”. Somehow, these statements slowly construct a seemingly confusing picture about how gaming affects the brain. While it’s clear that there are conflicting studies regarding video games, research about gaming is yet in its beginning chapter, and not yet reaching its acme. But based on all researches performed, there is something common in all their conclusions: video games can enhance particular skills such as cognitive, visual, multi-tasking, attention, cooperation …show more content…

“The better the template, the better the performance. And now we know playing action video game actually fosters better templates.” she also added In the study which was published at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , scientist differentiated traits from a gamer and a non-gamer through pattern discrimination test. The test which involves a pattern of fuzzy objects on a screen is initially tricky, but it becomes easier with practice. The gamers got better results and outperformed the non-gamers. Further studies showed that the reason for this is that gamers actually used better templates than the others did. To study more about the subject, the researchers enrolled a group with little gaming experiences and trained them to play video games. Half of the participants were asked to play an accumulated 50 hours of fast-paced action game, such as Call of Duty 2. The other half were asked to play casual games like The Sims. Before and after playing, the participants took the pattern discrimination test and the study showed that the players of action fast-paced video games did better than those who played casual video