A new study suggests that playing violent video games leads to changes in brain regions up to a week after participating in the activity.
The researchers examined the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). They found changes in brain regions associated with cognitive function and emotional control in young adult males after a week of playtime. The effect gradually wore off after two weeks.
The controversy over whether violent video games are potentially harmful to users has been raging for many years, extending all the way to the Supreme Court in 2010. However, there is little scientific evidence that the games have a lasting negative neurological effect.
"For the first time, we found that a sample of randomly assigned young adults showed lower activation in certain frontal brain regions after a week of violent video games at home," said Dr. Yang Wang. "These brain regions are important for control." Emotions and aggressive behavior. “
In the study, researchers randomly divided 22 healthy adult men ages 18 to 29 with low exposure to violent video games into two groups of 11 people.
Members of the first group were instructed to play a shooting video game at home for 10 hours for a week and not play the following week. The second group did not play any violent video game at all during the two-week period.
Each of the 22 men underwent an fMRI at the beginning of the study, with follow-up visits after one and two weeks.
During the fMRI, the participants completed a series of psychological tests. These included an emotional interference task, in which the subjects press buttons according to the color of the visually presented words. Words indicating violent acts were distributed between nonviolent action words.
In addition, the participants completed a task to count cognitive inhibition.
The results showed that after a week of vigorous play, the members of the video game group showed less activation in the left lower frontal lobe during the emotional task and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex during the counting task, compared to their baseline results and the control group's results after one week.
After the second week without playing, the changes in the executive regions of the brain were reduced.
Since the sample size of the study was small, the results must be considered preliminary until they are confirmed by additional research. It is also not clear from the data presented whether the brain changes mapped by the fMRI are the result of a novel cognitive activity, as opposed to only video games.
The results of the study were presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
Source: Radiological Society of North America