Do you play video games? If so, you’re not the only one. Gaming has become more and more common and video games are increasingly appreciated by adults.
As video games become more complex, they reach not only children but also adults, attracting older audiences. As a result, the number of people who choose this form of entertainment and who spend hours a day playing games on their PC or console is constantly increasing. The average age of players has risen and was estimated at 35 in 2020.
Many dedicated players play on PCs, laptops or consoles, but there are also occasional players who play on smartphones and tablets at various times during the day.
Scientists are interested in knowing the possible effects of long-term exposure to video games, and these effects are generally either positive, illustrated in the form of cognitive, emotional, motivational and social benefits, or negative, represented by aspects such as would be exposure to graphic violence, contribution to obesity, addiction, cardiometabolic deficiencies, etc.
Therefore, taking into account all the reasons mentioned above, video games have aroused more and more scientific interest in recent years. The number of publications that have studied or used this form of gaming has increased since 2005, at a constant rate of 20% per year.
During the 1990s, about 15 articles related to video games were published every year, while in 2015 this number reached over 350 scientific articles, reaching 460 in 2020.
Video games can change your brain
Gaming has become an increasingly popular activity in contemporary society, especially among young people, and video games are growing in popularity not only as a research tool, but also as a field of study.
Basically, video games have become an increasingly common form of entertainment, but do you know what effect it has on your brain and behavior? Studies investigating how video games can affect the brain have shown that they can cause changes in several regions of the brain.
Scientists have collected and synthesized studies on how video games can shape your brain and behavior. Research to date suggests that video games can change the regions of your brain that are responsible for attention and visual-spatial skills, making them more effective. Researchers also looked at studies that explore the regions of the brain associated with the reward system and how they relate to video game addiction. Visit gamingverdict.com to learn more about compulsive gaming.
Over the years, the media has made various statements about video games and their effect on health and happiness.
“Video games have sometimes been praised or described as threatening, with a negative effect, often without real data to support these claims. Moreover, games are a popular activity, so everyone seems to have strong opinions on the subject” said Marc Palaus, one of the authors of this study, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Marc Palaus and his team of researchers wanted to see if there were any trends in research so far on how video games affect the structure and activity of the human brain. The scientists collected the results of 116 scientific studies, of which 22 analyzed structural changes in the brain and 100 of them analyzed changes in brain functionality and/or human behavior.
Studies show that video games can change the performance of your brain and even its structure. For example, video games affect your attention, and some studies have found that video game practitioners have improvements in several types of attention, such as sustained attention or selective attention. The regions of the brain involved in attention are also more effective for gamers and require less activation to support attention to demanding tasks.
There is also evidence that video games can increase the size and effectiveness of brain regions related to visual and spatial abilities. For example, the right hippocampus was enlarged in both long-term players and volunteer study participants after taking part in a video game training program.
Video games can also be considered addictive, and this type of addiction is known as Internet gaming disorder. Researchers found changes in the way the neural reward system works and is structured in video game addicts.
This was done, in part, by exposing the test subjects to clues about the game, causing them to crave, tempting them, and monitoring their neural responses. These neural changes are practically the same as those observed in other addictive disorders similar to, for example, gambling and substance abuse.
So what do all these changes in your brain mean? “We focused on how the brain reacts to exposure to video games, but these effects do not always translate into changes in real life,” said Marc Palaus, one of the scientists who conducted this specialized analysis.
Moreover, because the gaming activity is relatively new, developing and researching their effects on the human brain, can be considered to be still at the beginning of the road. It is still being studied what aspects of video games affect the brain regions and how this happens.
How can games become an addiction?
Addiction is defined as the inability of an individual to control the use of a substance or behavior, despite the negative consequences and functional impairment of personal life.
Dopamine, a chemical that makes you feel good, is released in the brain when you experience the feeling of success, of achievement. The same process of dopamine release is triggered in the situation of addiction to video games and substances such as alcohol.
Dopamine helps sustain interest and attention, which is why it can be so hard for you to give up video games. In addition, the stronger the effect of dopamine, the more interest you experience. Then more dopamine is released and you pay more attention to that task. These biological processes can lead to long-term or permanent changes in the brain.
In conclusion, no matter what you play on, be it a console with a great PS5 4K gaming monitor, or the latest PC hardware with a great gaming setup, have a thought about what playing all day long does to you and your brain. Studies are still under development so don’t be surprised if your gaming activity does more harm to your mind than you might have thought