Playing Action Video Games May Be Bad For Your Brain, Study Finds (www.cbc.ca) 116
An anonymous reader shares a report:Playing first-person shooter video games causes some users to lose grey matter in a part of their brain associated with the memory of past events and experiences, a new study by two Montreal researchers concludes. Gregory West, an associate professor of psychology at the Universite de Montreal, says the neuroimaging study, published Tuesday in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, is the first to find conclusive evidence of grey matter loss in a key part of the brain as a direct result of computer interaction. "A few studies have been published that show video games could have a positive impact on the brain, namely positive associations between action video games, first-person shooter games, and visual attention and motor control skills," West told CBC News. To date, no one has shown that human-computer interactions could have negative impacts on the brain -- in this case the hippocampal memory system." The four-year study by West and Veronique Bohbot, an associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University, looked at the impact of action video games on the hippocampus, the part of the brain that plays a critical role in spatial memory and the ability to recollect past events and experiences.
Re: Everything is bad for you. (Score:1)
Well. Is it the gaming or the lack of sleep from staying up too late?
Who has time for action video games (Score:5, Funny)
What with all the porn, crystal meth, tv and politics we have to get through.
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Politics is entertainment these days. The orange dude Made America Laugh Again. His recent tweets about the "Vietnam vacation" almost made me crash laughing while listening to the news driving to work. (Let's just hope he doesn't break something important.)
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Pff who has time for all that porn, crystal meth, tv and politics when there's frags to rack up and gibs to liberate?
As a professional video game tester... (Score:1)
Re: As an actual video game engineer (Score:2)
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Creimer's full of shit.
No, video game testing was a dead end job. I got my certifications (A+/Network+/Windows) and learned computer programming to get out of the video game industry.
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Clicking the Amazon Associates stripe to get an affiliate link to spam on Slashdot doesn't count as "computer programming".
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Clicking the Amazon Associates stripe to get an affiliate link to spam on Slashdot doesn't count as "computer programming".
Thank God that I'm not a professional programmer by trade then.
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Not like cleaning closets. That's a job with limitless career growth.
I seriously don't understand your obsession about IT closets. I cleaned up a few in my 20+ year tech career and that's all you harped about.
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Mostly you get shit about it, because you cite it as evidence of your "miracle worker" status - as if getting paid an IT salary for doing low value work that is best accomplished by facilities and maintenance staff is somehow an accomplishment worthy of note.
These are IT closets that facilities refuses to clean up. Mostly because they don't want the electronic waste disposal fees charged to their budget. When I worked at a local hospital, it took three weeks for management to figure who was going to pay for three 40-yard dumpsters to throw out the packing materials (foam and cardboard) for 750 PCs and 1,500 monitors.
If you don't think it's important or relevant, why do YOU bring it up?
Because it pisses off my trolls.
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[...] you wasted money, time, and skills better spent on other tasks to clean something that literally nobody in the organization felt was a priority to fund or budget.
Until the fire marshal shows up. Then it becomes a priority. Having boxes stacked to the ceiling and blocking sprinklers is a no-no.
That management doesn't get their shit together on budgetary issues isn't really the problem of a low level ticket dispatcher
You must not work in a large corporation then. These bureaucratic battles are quite common. Also, I was the technician responsible for unboxing, imagining and deploying 750 PCs and 1,500 monitors. I wasn't dispatching tickets.
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And when the fire marshal shows up, then management will prioritize it, and suddenly when faced with a $10,000 fine for fire code infringements, or a $5,000 charge for e-waste disposal, the facilities department will suddenly find that it's part of their charter to clean up the closet.
Not at the companies I've worked at. Facilities doesn't do squat. If the IT department gets cited by the fire marshal, it comes out of the IT budget.
It's fucking stupid.
That's why contractors are hired to do all the "fucking stupid" jobs that full-time people don't want to touch. This is why I enjoy working as a contractor. Every job is completely different.
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If facilities doesn't do anything, why do you care?
Because I needed space for the next shipment of Dell PCs from China.
Pile the empty boxes in a hallway and tell your boss, "I can't do anything about it until you get a me a dumpster."
You don't put packing material out into the hallway of a hospital. The IT manager's response: "Go talk to facilities."
Plus, you never have to do anything useful - you can just clean closets and take boxes out to the dumpster.
Don't forget the 750 PCs and 1,500 monitors for deployment, the 750 PCs and 1,500 monitors for disposal, and a ton of old PC hardware pulled from the floors that looked like they were being used but no one was using them.
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He's also full of himself. But I repeat myself.
I heard those complaints when I went I got my certifications and went back to school. Seems like anyone who tries to better himself is "full of himself" and not "a team player". No wonder this country is screwed up.
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No, just you you fat fuck.
I'm afraid not. I've seen this quite frequently with other people. Whenever someone tries to better themselves or promote their personal brand, critics (trolls) are always ready to tear them down.
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Not a team player for working hard to better your career?
The ugly fact about being a video game tester is that any other job pays better. Whenever someone complained about Sony paying $20/hr when we got $16/hr, management told us to get a job at the Taco Bell down the street. That is until a tester got a job at Taco Bell with better pay and benefits.
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That would explain my poor event memory, my drive to work isn't horrible by a lot of people's standards but I spend about an hour and a half every day driving to and from work (combined); and I've only ever played FPSes - Doom, Quake, Half-Life, FarCry, Skyrim, Deus Ex, Rage, Wolfenstein, etc. :-(
My wife remembers all kinds of things and details and I just barely remember being there.
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My wife remembers all kinds of things and details and I just barely remember being there. :-(
I have the same experience, but I have drastically more hours in Civ2 and AlphaC than I do in all FPSes put together. I can't remember the names of streets, but once I drive someplace I can drive there again — unless I got there by GPS navigation, in which case I wasn't really using the navigating part of my brain, and I'm going to need the GPS at least another time or two.
On the other hand, some particular details stand out to me, and I remember them much later. I think the difference is really what
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Civ2 and AlphaC aren't games that are likely to build your spatial cognitive abilities. It's the maze-solving/navigation variety that do... and sandboxes with complicated maps, if you play them in an exploratively.
Witch hunt (Score:2, Funny)
Just another bogus study in a long line of anti-video game "studies".
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Actually, it's just another sensationalist headline saying wrong things about a study that is really very interesting. I recommend RTFA.
Twitch games build up one part of the brain and make the hippocampus atrophy. 3-D platformers (VR?) build up the hippocampus. The authors suggest FPS game makers take away the mini-maps and wayfinders and add more scenery and mazes to balance things out.
Which makes me surprised that BL2 was to them a typical action game... the maps in that are usually best navigated by s
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People drink to forget, get high to forget and play games to forget.
I guess from this point of view games work perfectly and meet the goals.
Bad or evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Grey matter loss seems bad, but at the same time I wonder if we're just detecting humans adapting to technology - maybe it's not so much a net loss in brain functionality but more a manifestation of tradeoffs being made.
For example, growing up there was a lot of emphasis on memorizing information (memorize all the countries of the world, memorize all US states and their capitals, memorize these dates in history, memorize these mathematical equations, etc.). These days that seems far less useful.
So, if we offload to technology the storage and recall of trivia, it wouldn't be surprising to find that some part of our brains are less used compared with those of people 50 years ago. But maybe we'd also see that the brains of people today are better at being exposed to more data without being overwhelmed, or better at quickly sifting through mounds of information to find something in particular, or better at distilling lots of info down to its essence.
Re:Bad or evolution? (Score:5, Informative)
Grey matter loss seems bad, but at the same time I wonder if we're just detecting humans adapting to technology - maybe it's not so much a net loss in brain functionality but more a manifestation of tradeoffs being made.
For example, growing up there was a lot of emphasis on memorizing information (memorize all the countries of the world, memorize all US states and their capitals, memorize these dates in history, memorize these mathematical equations, etc.). These days that seems far less useful.
So, if we offload to technology the storage and recall of trivia, it wouldn't be surprising to find that some part of our brains are less used compared with those of people 50 years ago. But maybe we'd also see that the brains of people today are better at being exposed to more data without being overwhelmed, or better at quickly sifting through mounds of information to find something in particular, or better at distilling lots of info down to its essence.
The study is more nuanced than that. It says that Response learners (people who count right and left turns) lose grey matter when playing FPS games for extended periods of time. But Spacial learners (those who use landmarks) seem not to be affected. I use spacial cues in FPS games because there is no way that I could remember left/right turns in games like Skyrim.
The study also found that playing 3D platformers (i.e. Mario Brothers) reversed the grey matter loss.
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There are people who count right and left turns? That hasn't even occurred to me as a viable strategy and now I feel stupid and ignorant of this.
It's a classic strategy for traversing a maze or structure, but I for one have problems with numbers and I lose count, so I navigate by landmarks, colors, whatever is unique about the different areas. It really made the near-endgame of Halo horrible, I got turned around a bunch of times :)
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Yes, that's very true. But how often do those come up in reality? Or even in a game, for that matter. Usually there's at least one tricky feature included to trip up that strategy. Except, of course, Halo. The only problem then is if you get turned around because of an extended firefight with the occasional surprise, and doorways. Do virtual doorways cause the same memory problems as real ones?
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There was this dungeon crawler game back in the late 90s, early 2000. Mordor II, later Demise. Its map wasn't fluid but divided into squares, 45x45 I think, and then of course a ridiculous number of levels deep.
By the time I grew bored of it, I was walking down to level 14 from the city just by remembering the number of keystrokes on the arrow keys. So yeah, it could be done - but I wouldn't really use it in any modern 3D game. Landmarks are the way to go - head under the outcrop and continue ahead to the t
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Really to get a full workout, you need to be re-traversing the map so you come it the same room from different angles/perspectives. If you always respawn in the same place and run the same path to go get killed by the boss again and again, you'll regress into only exerting your response centers.
So, nix on the spawn poles, too, or at least have a lot of eligible spawn points within range from which to randomly choose.
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I use spacial cues in FPS games because there is no way that I could remember left/right turns in games like Skyrim.
The study also found that playing 3D platformers (i.e. Mario Brothers) reversed the grey matter loss.
What did they say about CounterStrike? I play a fair bit and seem to have above average reaction, attention, motor skills etc, but also have terrible memory. To the GP's point, do I care? Figuring things out quickly is more important these days than remembering stuff, could this just but an evolutionary shift where strong memory becomes as useful as a tail?
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This is probably more on-point than conclusions that it's just outright brain damage. Lots of studies have shown there are tradeoffs for certain types of intellectual capacity. In one notable study they found that all chimpanzees have perfect photographic memories. The researchers hypothesized that human beings may have lost the ubiquity of this mental trait as a tradeoff for language processing capabilities.
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Yeah, I'm very suspicious when these types of claims are made without considering the tradeoff.
I'm very much oriented towards rapid processing of information. On the contrary, I have a much more difficult time with memorization and procedural tasks than other people.
The Richard Feynman archetype has existed forever, I think its just that now everyone who doesn't have that personality is being directed into it by the internet.
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Yes and yes! This line of questions is something I've wondered about too and ... I don't know what the right answer is. :)
On the one hand, memorizing gobs of factoids like I did in grade school seems like a waste. OTOH, without some set of hopefully-common knowledge, you can't really participate in society as well, much less avoiding repeating the mistakes of history. I found this article https://www.nytimes.com/intera... [nytimes.com] pretty fascinating, for example.
For me personally I seem to do best if I'm aware of st
Re: Bad or evolution? (Score:1)
I wonder whether it isn't an evolved response, like the brain perceiving it as combat, and prioritizing survival over other more intellectual functions
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For example, growing up there was a lot of emphasis on memorizing information (memorize all the countries of the world, memorize all US states and their capitals, memorize these dates in history, memorize these mathematical equations, etc.). These days that seems far less useful.
Forced memorization of things you're not actually using was always stupid. When you actually use things repeatedly, you learn them plenty quickly.
Memorizing equations is probably the exception, though. Knowing which equation to use when seems indispensable. You could figure it out if you're a badass mathematician, but why waste the time?
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Agreed, although those too either remain with you if you use them or generally fade away if you don't use them regularly. I'm pretty sure the volume of a sphere is 4/3 * pi * r^3, but that's something I'd double check before relying on it since it's not something I use often. And it's been years since I've used the quadratic formula so I'd definitely have to Google that one. Those are really basic equations, and some people would be shocked that anyone doesn't just know them, while others would not even kno
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The most valuable thing you can teach is a taxonomy of what there is to learn, and the methods to learn it. But throwing some random data from some leaf nodes of that taxonomy can lead to a few "ah-ha I know this one" moments which will provide emotional motivation to put some flesh on those bones.
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data without being overwhelmed, or better at quickly sifting through mounds of information to find something in particular, or better at distilling lots of info down to its essence.
Yeah I'm excellent at ignoring everything to save energy ;D
Misleading title (Score:5, Insightful)
Media cycle (Score:3)
In other words :
Article "Doing activity X will improve training on capability A and B, but the unused skill C and D will dwindle"
Press "OMG! X is going to kill us all because of C and D ! Quick, click on our advertisement!"
Cue in ob. reference to PhDcomics [phdcomics.com]
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Playing Action Video Games May Be Bad For Your Brain, Study Finds
Playing first-person shooter video games causes some users to lose grey matter
The qualifiers are right there. You're the one who paraphrased incorrectly.
And next week it will be..... (Score:2)
Playing Action Video Games May Be GOOD For Your Brain, Study Finds..... Click bait!
Kotaku-in-Action (Score:2)
Most of us already knew playing action video games was bad for your brain.
Remember #gamergate?
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You mean the thing where a bunch of women hating basement dwellers tried everything possible to get women who dare criticize or work in video games fired or killed?
Ironically, reading the thread over here [slashdot.org] and over here [slashdot.org] shows that the biggest supporters of firing critics are, in fact, the ones who were the biggest supporters of the games journos.
This whole google-firing scandal is rich in irony - I'm waiting to hear those same supporters whine about the silencing effect of the government when google gets slapped with a fine for illegally firing someone (AKA silencing the dissenting opinions). There is literally no way out of this that does not reveal all the "feminis
Study actually looks at navigation strategies used (Score:4, Informative)
Actual study (open access): http://www.nature.com/mp/journ... [nature.com]
The actual study looks at the navigation strategies used in games and separates both the type of games and the type of players; i.e., players of the same game using different navigation strategies develop their brains differently.
The finding is that if you play first person shooters and just wander around and shoot things, the hippocampus doesn't develop (and decreases in mass). By contrast, if you learn to navigate based on references in the game (or, by dying repeatedly by navigating incorrectly, as is common in the Mario game control group they used) your brain develops.
It would be interesting to see a comparison between Call of Duty pub players and competitive Counter-Strike players. The former just "shoot everything that moves". The latter are highly coordinated like SWAT teams. The present findings seem to suggest that the latter--in the same game--would develop their brain matter, whereas the former would not.
All things in moderation (Score:1)
A general rule of life is "all things in moderation". If you do too much of ANYTHING, it usually causes problems or risk. Too much exercise, such as running or weight lifting, even appears to be detrimental. If you spend most of your free time gaming, you are probably screwing yourself over. Same applies to coffee, alcohol, porn, trolling slashdot, you name it. Mix it up, get out more. (Yes, I am pulling a Shatner skit here. Deal with it.)
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You must be a software tester.
You mean to tell me... (Score:2)
that if you use your brain in a narrow way for a large portion of your life, that your brain will become less good at the things you don't use it for?
Here comes my shocked face again.
Small wonder (Score:2)
"Playing first-person shooter video games causes some users to lose grey matter"
My character has his brains flying around all the time in the games I play.
Isn't the lesson here... (Score:2)
Impact of video games on plasticity of the hippocampus [nature.com]
The study was mostly on the effects of different navigation mechanisms (the "control group" did 3d platforming) - so isn't the lesson here, if you spend lots of time gaming, don't only play one kind of game?
Also, where was the non-videogaming control? Isn't there a general loss of grey matter over time regardless? I'd think tablet/GPS users using virtually NO navigational skil
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Cool - really like Dr Steven Novella's take on this - I listen to the Skeptics Guide podcast on occasion when I can.
Ryan Fenton
My Brain Hutrs... (Score:2)
The game may only be a simulation, but the PTSD is real.
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Well, it'll have to come out!
Did they account for pot use? (Score:2)
We therefore followed up Study 1 with two longitudinal training studies where participants trained in-lab for 90h on either an action or 3D-platform video game (Study 2) or on an action-role playing game
How many players of Call of Duty were habitual pot users vs the players of My Little Pony Sparkle Adventures?
Wait... don't answer that...
Oh no! We are DOOMed! (Score:2)
Fight or Flight Reaction, Maybe? (Score:1)
Well .... (Score:2)
This bothers me... (Score:2)
This bothers me because I have good visual attention and motor control skills but poor memory and...well, look at my username...
Maybe the puzzle games would help to compensate for the FPS damage? :-P
I thought I read where gaming was good? (Score:2)
Adjust Data For Krunk? (Score:1)
Here (Score:2)
https://www.nature.com/mp/jour... [nature.com]
Forget short hand summaries and the articles you are gonna read about this subject that are often misguided and sensationalistic.
Read the piece. It has some merit, but it might not be drawing the conclusions that people are writing about it.
Use it or loose it? (Score:2)
And TV... (Score:2)
... makes your whole brain shrink, right?
Articles take the lazy approach (Score:2)