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The benefits and harms of video games

12.08.2017

Researchers from the University of Montreal invited XNUMX volunteers, who were roughly equal in size to men and women, to walk through a virtual maze. There were several paths in the labyrinth where it was necessary to collect certain items, and this task could be completed faster if you memorized the routes that you had already walked - that is, you should pay attention to various surrounding signs, such as stone, wood, etc. .

With such an orientation to the terrain, the hippocampus is triggered in our brain - a special area in the brain that serves as one of the main memory centers and at the same time plays the role of a cartographer, that is, it builds maps of the surrounding landscape.

But in the labyrinth it was possible to do otherwise - just remember the sequence of turns to the right and left. In this case, another area of the brain comes into play, partly duplicating the functions of the hippocampus - the caudate nucleus, which is part of the striatum.

The caudate nucleus works as an autopilot, allowing us to perform certain automatic actions, and at the same time it is included in the reinforcement system - this is the name of a large complex of nerve centers that controls our motivation, our desires and feelings of pleasure.

You can also follow the route with the help of the caudate nucleus, however, here it will not be so much a map of the area as remembering the actions that need to be performed for a reward: remembering how many times and where you turned before, you can get to the next desired item in the maze and get a portion pleasant sensations.
The maze search made it possible to separate those who build maps with the help of the hippocampus and those who follow the route with the help of the caudate nucleus, an autopilot that seeks pleasure. Then some of the participants in the experiment were put into playing shooter games, while others took up 3-D platform games in the Super Mario Bros series; both those and others had to "play enough" for about 90 hours.

And it turned out that games have different effects on the brain. If a person who walked along the route, obeying the reinforcement system, played a shooter game, then as a result, the amount of gray matter in his hippocampus decreased. The authors of the work explain this by the fact that such games, in principle, tend to encourage the reinforcement system, so that in "chronic players" the hippocampus can shrink quite strongly, as if it is unnecessary. We say "as if" because the hippocampus, whatever one may say, is still needed outside the video shooter, and the consequences of a lack of gray matter in it can be quite serious - it is known that a decrease in the hippocampus accompanies depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's syndrome, etc. d.

On the other hand, for those players who navigated the terrain, combining in their minds different elements of the landscape - that is, for those who initially were more involved in the navigational skills of the hippocampus - the gray matter in it, on the contrary, became larger; that is, even in a shooter, they were guided by a neutral map, and not by anticipation of pleasure.

Finally, the platformer about the Mario brothers contributed to the strengthening of the hippocampus in both categories of players - obviously, the very structure of such games forces you to build maps in your mind.

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