Children who play video games show altered brain activity that suggests improved cognitive abilities
Children who play video games show altered brain activity that suggests improved cognitive abilities
Children who play video games show altered brain activity that suggests improved cognitive abilities
By Beth Ellwood
December 29, 2022
Summary
Findings from a brain imaging study published in JAMA Network Open suggest that playing video games may be beneficial for children's cognitive development.
The study found that children who regularly played video games performed better on two cognitive tasks and showed altered cortical activation patterns in regions of the brain implicated in attention, memory, and visual processing.
Video games are more popular than ever among youth, with surveys suggesting that the majority of children and adolescents play them.
"As a video gamer since my childhood and co-investigator in the ABCD study, I was naturally interested in exploring in a large sample of children how video gaming is associated with brain function and cognition," said Chaarani, an assistant professor at the University of Vermont.
"The large longitudinal ABCD study dataset enables us to track these gamers from 9 and 10 years old through adolescence and young adulthood, and examine the impact of video games on different aspects such as brain function, neurocognition, mental health and behavior."
Importantly, the findings were also significant after controlling for video watching, suggesting that the brain activation differences were specific to video gaming more than video watching.
An important limitation of the study was that there was no data on the genre of video games played - and different types of video games might have different effects on cognition.
Reference
Ellwood, B. (2022, December 29). Children who play video games show altered brain activity that suggests improved cognitive abilities. PsyPost. Retrieved January 20, 2023, from https://www.psypost.org/2022/12/children-who-play-video-games-show-altered-brain-activity-that-suggests-improved-cognitive-abilities-64603