When Gaming Is Good for You

[Crow]

Wall Street Journal - When Gaming Is Good for You

Videogames can change a person's brain and, as researchers are finding, often that change is for the better.

A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception. The specific benefits are wide ranging, from improved hand-eye coordination in surgeons to vision changes that boost night driving ability.

People who played action-based video and computer games made decisions 25% faster than others without sacrificing accuracy, according to a study. Indeed, the most adept gamers can make choices and act on them up to six times a second—four times faster than most people, other researchers found. Moreover, practiced game players can pay attention to more than six things at once without getting confused, compared with the four that someone can normally keep in mind, said University of Rochester researchers. The studies were conducted independently of the companies that sell video and computer games.

[xSilverPhinx]

Really cool topic, thanks for the link.

[Guardian85]

I have heard of this. There is some logic behind it. If you practice decision-making in a simulator it will help in real life.

[Too Few Lions]

yeah, I've often thought that might be the case from my own experience of gaming. You can definitely notice games stimulating your brain while you're playing them.

[Melmoth]

Funny how this article presents itself as counter-intuitive, really. 'Games', more or less by definition, stimulate your brain and your reflexes, be they video or otherwise. It ought to be reasonable to assume they're quite good for you, with or without official studies to back it up.

It's nice to read something positive about games, though, especially in a journal that isn't specifically tailored to them. Makes a change from the usual mix of fear and condescension that any new media platform inevitably attracts from earlier generations.

[pytheas]

its a matter of excess

when heroin is good for you? when dying in severe terminal metastatic cancerous pain

when prostitutes are good for you? when you would be molesting/raping/abusing  or can't get it otherwise

when suicide is good for you? well, arguably anytime


the addictive potential, and social substitution tendencies have to be acknowledged and monitored with game usage in younglings

nearly anything in its apropria-te moderation has a green light to go ahead

a magic mushroom once in your life could be good for you

[Melmoth]

the addictive potential, and social substitution tendencies have to be acknowledged and monitored with game usage in younglings

I agree with this and would apply to all forms of entertainment. Too many games, films or books and the younglings will never go outside. I wouldn't compare reading Harry Potter to hard drugs or prostitution though... somehow that seems a little severe.

[Guardian85]

Of course one cannot just be gaming, one needs other activities as well.
Socialize with friends, take a nice walk on a sunny day... and then blow that australian basterds head off with an RPG!

[xSilverPhinx]

Putting aside whether games can be detrimental in that they're good for escapism or whatever and the excesses  and addictions that come from that, this is really more about the physical changes that happen in the brain after playing. Not that there's a social side to it all, but that's secondary, IMO.

If some games cause people to be faster decision makers and better real time strategists, then that means that the brain has molded itself into a more effective thing through it's plasticity (new connections). It's a learning tool essentially, and that's what makes it really interesting. Look up the Tetris Effect: for more highly skilled players, their brain uses up less energy to perform more difficult tasks than that of a beginner, which uses up a lot of energy to perform simpler tasks.

It's analogous I guess to studying maths. The more problems you solve, the more you change your brain through new connections with more efficient pathways that probably help you see more and new creative solutions.

What scares some people about some sorts of games is that they change people's brains for the worst, such as in the case of first-person-shooters having a negative effect on emotional control and that that will dictate worse behaviour.

As for things that are undoubtably good, such as maths, an engineer could be devising a more efficient guillotine with their new learned capacities, but you don't see all the fear-mongering that goes on with the subject of maths because of darker possibilities. Muahaha.

[pytheas]

It's analogous I guess to studying maths. The more problems you solve, the more you change your brain through new connections with more efficient pathways that probably help you see more and new creative solutions.

This, unlike the rest of your eloquent contribution, I doubt.

In maths you form, you create avenues of appplication, prooving your concept as you go along.brain energy expenditute is two fold. one in forming the ideas, the other in reactionary responses=alertness of the field

In most games, all you do is react, sit on the driver's seat and switching fully on autopilot, turn on-cue the wheel to follow the audiovisual input, interactive cinema-going. brain energy expenditute is singular, reactionary responses=alertness of the field. creativity goes to pause, sleep or hibernation.

with maths you learn how to think
with  games you stop thinking, and play

the day a math-learnplay game in astronaut-alien serologic chess encounters appears, the good teachers are in danger of loosing their jobs

no machine game has yet to perform as vivid as the tickle from a friend

[Guardian85]

In maths you form, you create avenues of appplication, prooving your concept as you go along.brain energy expenditute is two fold. one in forming the ideas, the other in reactionary responses=alertness of the field

In most games, all you do is react, sit on the driver's seat and switching fully on autopilot, turn on-cue the wheel to follow the audiovisual input, interactive cinema-going. brain energy expenditute is singular, reactionary responses=alertness of the field. creativity goes to pause, sleep or hibernation.

with maths you learn how to think
with  games you stop thinking, and play

the day a math-learnplay game in astronaut-alien serologic chess encounters appears, the good teachers are in danger of loosing their jobs

This does not seem to be a reasonable statement to me. A lot of games are related in some way to advanced problem solving and the need to make a plan and be able to execute it with limited recources. The concept that defines games away from movies and comic books, (cinema-going, i believe you called it) is the fact that the game presents a challenge and requires you to complete it to advance the game.
Those who play little don't often realise how much more thinking you have to do while playing a resonably advanced game as opposed to watching TV.

[Buddy]

This does not seem to be a reasonable statement to me. A lot of games are related in some way to advanced problem solving and the need to make a plan and be able to execute it with limited recources. The concept that defines games away from movies and comic books, (cinema-going, i believe you called it) is the fact that the game presents a challenge and requires you to complete it to advance the game.
Those who play little don't often realise how much more thinking you have to do while playing a resonably advanced game as opposed to watching TV.

Isn't that what Portal 2 was about? Trying to solve puzzles without resources?

[xSilverPhinx]

It's analogous I guess to studying maths. The more problems you solve, the more you change your brain through new connections with more efficient pathways that probably help you see more and new creative solutions.

This, unlike the rest of your eloquent contribution, I doubt.

In maths you form, you create avenues of appplication, prooving your concept as you go along.brain energy expenditute is two fold. one in forming the ideas, the other in reactionary responses=alertness of the field

In most games, all you do is react, sit on the driver's seat and switching fully on autopilot, turn on-cue the wheel to follow the audiovisual input, interactive cinema-going. brain energy expenditute is singular, reactionary responses=alertness of the field. creativity goes to pause, sleep or hibernation.

with maths you learn how to think
with  games you stop thinking, and play

the day a math-learnplay game in astronaut-alien serologic chess encounters appears, the good teachers are in danger of loosing their jobs

no machine game has yet to perform as vivid as the tickle from a friend

You're not a gamer, I take it?

The article Crow posted is making a case for brain plasticity, which is directly involved with changing physical connections to accommodate learning I guess, though I'm not saying that playing a puzzle game for hours and mastering it is going to teach you advanced maths or turn you into a genius. If it can be shown that a person's brain becomes more efficient (uses less energy to perform a task, and maybe even that task becomes sort of second nature such as riding a bike after you've learned it) then the process would be very similar to what happens when brains are trained to solve maths problems.

People have tested some results such as the ability to pay attention to more objects at once and visual processing, which I doubt would happen as well if gaming were as passive as watching TV. Games are interactive, have growing levels of difficulty and some even have steep learning curves (try playing Anno 2070). Watching TV isn't something that becomes more difficult as you progress, so it doesn't force you to learn or master a new skill to progress.

Or maybe even a better example that was mentioned: real time strategy (games such as Total War) in which players are forced to make calculation-based decisions in real time which could affect whether they get the optimal outcome. Again, hardly comparable to passively watching TV.

I think the dopamine release (reward neurotransimssor which is related to helping learning and helps form new connections...and cause addictions) is also similar when playing games. To compare, I'm assuming that people who really like maths get the same sort of intrinsic motivation that a gamer feels while playing a good and challenging game that needs mastering.

What do you think about the so called brain training games? Such as memory games (especially those which rely on working memory which is definitely something good to have if you're trying to solve step-by-step problems (I know this, I have lousy working memory)

brain energy expenditute is singular, reactionary responses=alertness of the field

From wiki:

Luders and colleagues in a literature review (2009) write that the majority of data shows that both gray matter and white matter volume correlate with IQ but the correlation is stronger for gray matter. Increased number of neurons in the gray matter may explain the higher correlation but not necessarily so since glucose consumption and intelligence measures correlate negatively which may mean intelligent individuals use their neurons more efficiently, such as being more efficient in their formation of synapses between neurons which help to create more efficient neural circuitry *(plastictiy).

* My addition, going back to what the topic was about

I saw a video on Youtube on this, but I couldn't find it. ??? I'll look some more later.

*Edited for correction

[ThinkAnarchy]

I had already heard surgeons being encouraged to play video games due to improved hand eye coordination, but the rest is news to me. It certainly makes sense, though I'm as clumsy as I was as a child after playing video games for the past  25 years. I must be the exception, but than again I would never be able to be a surgeon because I'm not good at science and have shaky hands.

The faster and more accurate decision making is what I find most interesting. I may have to get back into RTS. I miss the Total War series, although I do currently have Total War: Rome for my mac.

[Guardian85]

There have been made studies that show that high-level gamers have reaction times and mental sharpness equivalent to fighter pilots, though obviously not as good physical health.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/7808860/Computer-gamers-have-reactions-of-pilots-but-bodies-of-chain-smokers.html

The cyber-sportsmen had mental sharpness and psychological traits comparable to 'real' athletes, and reacted to visual stimuli almost as fast as fighter jet pilots.

But their fitness levels were shockingly low and comparable to people either much younger or much older than their actual age

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that a little gaming is good for you, but remember to get up out of the chair every now and then.