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People who play video games have more activity in certain parts of the brain than those who don’t, and a new study suggests that video games can be used to teach better decision-making skills.
Researchers at Georgia State University looked at 47 college-age participants for the study — 28 video game players and 19 non-players. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI), the researchers found that video game players had “enhanced activity in key brain regions” and “superior sensorimotor decision-making skills.”
“Video games are played by most of our teens for more than three hours each week, but the beneficial effects on decision-making abilities and the brain are not known with certainty,” said lead researcher Mukesh Dhamala, professor at the Georgia State Department of State. Physics and Astronomy and the university’s Institute of Neuroscience. “Our work provides some answers to that.
“Playing video games can be effectively used for training – for example, decision-making efficiency training and therapeutic interventions – once the relevant brain networks are identified,” continued Dhamala.
Participants were placed in an FMRI machine with a mirror that allowed them to see cues immediately followed by a display of moving dots. They were asked to press a button in their right or left hand to indicate the direction the dots were moving, or refuse to press any button if there was no directional movement.
Quinten Jehoul (ERM_Quinten) (Photo by Clive Rose – Gran Turismo/Gran Turismo via Getty Images)
The study found that video game players outperformed non-players in terms of response speed and accuracy.
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“This lack of speed-accuracy tradeoff would suggest video game play as a good candidate for cognitive training as it relates to decision-making,” write the authors.
These findings are detailed in a paper called “Video Game Players Have Better Decision Making Ability and Enhanced Brain Activity” and published in the journal Neuroimage: Reports.
“These results suggest that playing video games has the potential to improve several subprocesses for sensation, perception, and mapping to action to improve decision-making skills,” write the authors. “These findings begin to explain how playing video games alters the brain to improve task performance and its potential implications for increasing task-specific activity.”
