Give me a break video games rewiring the human brain!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Truth About Video Games and the Brain: What Research Tells Us
February 9, 2012
by Bill Jenkins, Ph.D
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We’ve all seen the news reports, but how do video games really affect the brain? The short answer is this: researchers are working on it. While a great many studies have been done, science has a long way to go before we fully understand the impact video games can have.
The brain is a malleable, “plastic” structure that can change and evolve with every stimulus we give it. Whether that stimulus comes from listening to Tchaikovsky, studying Spanish, training in karate, or jumping through the mushroom kingdom in Super Mario Bros. Wii, every single input can affect the wiring of the brain if the conditions are right.
In a December 2011 article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, six experts in neuroscience and cognitive psychology – Daphne Bavelier, C. Shawn Green, Doug Hyun Han, Perry F. Renshaw, Michael M. Merzenich and Douglas A. Gentile – offer their perspectives on frequently asked questions related to the effects of video games on the brain:
Are there beneficial effects of video games? Does evidence point to improvements in cognitive function?
Given the wide variety of game types and the tasks they demand of the brain, this is an extremely complex and layered issue. Han and Renshaw cite studies indicating that game play may improve visual-spatial capacity, visual acuity, task switching, decision making and object tracking. In perception, gaming has been shown to enhance low-level vision, visual attention, processing speed and statistical inference. These skills are not necessarily general improvements in cognitive functioning, but specific skills transferrable to similar tasks. (Gentile)
Does playing video games have negative effects on the brain and behavior?
On this issue, the jury is essentially unanimous: intensive play of high-action games has been shown to have negative cognitive effects. Merzenich references studies that indicate such games can create “listlessness and discontent in slower-paced and less stimulating academic, work or social environments.” Research has drawn connections between playing more violent games and an increase in more aggressive thoughts. Games with anti-social or violent content “have been shown to reduce empathy, to reduce stress associated with observing or initiating anti-social actions, and to increase confrontational and disruptive behaviors in the real world.” (ibid)
How strong is the evidence that video games are addictive?
While strong evidence is mounting, research is proceeding but still incomplete. According to Han and Renshaw, investigations suggest that “brain areas that respond to game stimuli in patients with on-line game addiction are similar to those that respond to drug cue-induced craving in patients with substance dependence.” In addition, they state that gaming dependence has been shown to create “dysfunction in five domains: academic, social, occupational, developmental and behavioral.” While gaming addiction may differ from other types of addiction, it clearly appears to be a very real issue.
What should the role of video games be in education and rehabilitation? Again, if we come back to the underlying fact that any stimulus can change the brain under the right conditions, video games – a source of stimuli – certainly have a role to play in these areas. The question is, what stimuli are beneficial to which individuals, and how can we customize the gaming experience to give the learner or patient the stimuli that they most need at a given moment? Adaptive technologies that track a user’s responses and present follow-up material based on those response patterns, especially when wielded by an experienced educator or clinician, offer immense potential.
The last question these experts address is: Where is neuroscience headed in this field?
Clearly, studies have shown that video games affect and change the brain, both for ill as well as for good. Some researchers, such as neuroscientist Paul Howard-Jones of Bristol University, are already experimenting with ways to harness computer gaming to enhance classroom learning. Future studies are likely to uncover both detrimental effects of video games and significant benefits of their employment as learning and rehabilitation tools.
“Because of their great didactic efficiencies,” says Merzenich, “and because of brain plasticity-based exercises can improve the performance characteristics of the brain of almost every child, these new game-like tools shall be at the core of a schooling revolution.”
http://www.scilearn.com/blog/video-games-brain.php
It is junk science.
Paul Howard-Jones of Bristol University, are already experimenting with ways to harness computer gaming to enhance classroom learning.
The human brain and even higher animal brains are far too complex to be able to draw any details conclusions from the firing of groups of cells in any area of the brain.
the same could be said about the studies of the 1950s concerning the doom of the younger generation due to TV.
Association between child and adolescent television viewing
and adult health: a longitudinal birth cohort study
Robert J Hancox, Barry J Milne, Richie Poulton
www.thelancet.com Vol 364 July 17, 2004
Summary
Background
Watching television in childhood and adolescence has been linked to adverse health indicators including obesity, poor fitness, smoking, and raised cholesterol. However, there have been no longitudinal
studies of childhood viewing and adult health. We explored these associations in a birth cohort followed up to age 26 years.
Methods
We assessed approximately 1000 unselected individuals born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972–73 at regular intervals up to age 26 years. We used regression analysis to investigate the associations between earlier
television viewing and body-mass index, cardiorespiratory fitness (maximum aerobic power assessed by a submaximal cycling test), serum cholesterol, smoking status, and blood pressure at age 26 years.
Findings
Average weeknight viewing between ages 5 and 15 years was associated with higher body-mass indices (p=0·0013), lower cardiorespiratory fitness (p=0·0003), increased cigarette smoking (p<0·0001), and raised
serum cholesterol (p=0·0037). Childhood and adolescent viewing had no significant association with blood pressure. These associations persisted after adjustment for potential confounding factors such as childhood
socioeconomic status, body-mass index at age 5 years, parental body-mass index, parental smoking, and physical activity at age 15 years. In 26-year-olds, population-attributable fractions indicate that 17% of overweight, 15% of raised serum cholesterol, 17% of smoking, and 15% of poor fitness can be attributed to watching television formore than 2 h a day during childhood and adolescence.
Interpretation
Television viewing in childhood and adolescence is associated with overweight, poor fitness, smoking, and raised cholesterol in adulthood. Excessive viewing might have long-lasting adverse effects on health....
Although the adult health indicators that we have found to be associated with child and adolescent television viewing are unlikely to result in clinical
health problems by the age of 26 years, they are well established risk factors for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality later in life. Our results suggest that excessive television viewing in young people is likely to
have far-reaching consequences for adult health. We concur with the American Academy of Pediatrics2 that parents should limit children’s viewing to 1–2 h per day; in fact, data suggest that less than 1 h a day would
be even better.
Although parents might find this difficult to maintain, lifestyle modifications in adulthood to reverse overweight, poor fitness, highblood cholesterol, and smoking are also notoriously difficult to achieve. Parents will need support and encouragement at an individual, community, and societal level. Adults are likely to obtain health benefits themselves if they lead by example and turn off thetelevision. We believe that reducing television viewing should become a population health priority.
www.thelancet.com Vol 364 July 17, 2004
http://www.commercialalert.org/tvhancox.pdf
Watching television might also influence other behaviours, such as cigarette smoking, which we found to be significantly associated with television viewing. Adjustment for parental smoking made no difference to this association, suggesting that television has an effect that is independent of family health practices. Although television advertising of
tobacco was banned in New Zealand before study members were born, programmes have continued to show frequent images of smoking during children’s viewing time. For example, tobacco sponsorship of
sport continued until 1995, and there is evidence that New Zealand children have been affected by such advertising because watching televised sport has been reported to be an independent risk factor for smoking in 14–15 year-olds...
A 26 year longitudinal study found that TV viewing in childhood and adolescence is associated with adverse effects on adult health.
Quote:Does playing video games have negative effects on the brain and behavior?
On this issue, the jury is essentially unanimous: intensive play of high-action games has been shown to have negative cognitive effects. Merzenich references studies that indicate such games can create “listlessness and discontent in slower-paced and less stimulating academic, work or social environments.”
"Hey! Kids don't like school, and they don't like work! And they like excitement!"
Must've been a real tough conclusion to draw....
Attention and cognition
In August 1999, the American Academy of
Pediatrics (AAP) issued guidelines recommending
that children under the age of
two watch no television or any screen
entertainment at all because television
‘can negatively affect early brain development’
and that children of all ages should
not have a television in their bedroom.
This announcement has more recently
been followed by a study of 2,500 children
(Christakis et al, 2004) published in their
journal, Pediatrics, looking at whether
early exposure to television during critical
periods of synaptic development would
be associated with subsequent attentional
problems.
About 5% of children now exhibit attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),
and its incidence appears to be increasing.
Although genetic inheritance accounts for
some of the prevalence of ADHD, and
despite decades of research, little thought
has gone in to the potentially crucial role
that early childhood experiences may have
on the development of attentional problems.
Christakis and his colleagues wondered
if there was an omnipresent environmental
agent that is putting some children at risk
of developing ADHD. They found that
early television exposure was associated
with attentional problems at age seven
which was consistent with a diagnosis of
ADHD. Children who watched television
at ages one and three had a significantly
increased risk of developing such attentional
problems by the time they were
seven. For every hour of television a child
watched per day, there was a 9% increase
in attentional problems. The authors suggest
that their findings may actually be an
understatement of the effects on children.
Yet attention is not merely confined to
everyday descriptions such as concentration
or attention span. New brain-imaging
studies are finding that different parts of
the brain deal with different types of
attention, and so there can be types of
attentional damage different from ADHD.
If early exposure to television does affect aspects of attention later on, what mechanisms
may be involved?
Television elicits what Pavlov first
described as the orienting response, our
instinctive sensitivity to movement and
sudden changes in vision or sound. The
orienting response to television is apparent
almost from birth: infants, when lying on
their backs on the floor, will crane their
necks around 180 degrees to watch (Kubey
and Csikszentmihalyi, 2004). Twenty years
ago, studies began to look at whether the
medium of television alone – the stylistic
techniques of cuts, edits, zooms, pans, sudden
noises, not the content of the programme
– activates this orienting
response.
By watching how electroencephalogram
(EEG) responses were
affected, Reeves et al found that these stylistic
techniques can indeed trigger involuntary
physiological responses of detecting
and attending to movement – dynamic
stimuli – something television has in
abundance. These techniques also cause us
to continue to pay attention to the screen.
Most of our stares at a television screen
are highly prone to termination, lasting
less than three seconds. But as we continue
to stare, our stare becomes progressively
less fragile gaining a powerful attentional
inertia after about 15 seconds. By increasing
the rate of edits – camera changes in
the same visual scene – one can increase
the subject’s physiological arousal along
with attention to the screen.
Modern television has increased the use
of these stylistic techniques. A study of
the pace and editing speed of Sesame
Street over 26 years observed that the
number of editing cuts on this popular
educational children’s programme actually
doubled during this period. Others have
compared the attentional demands of
children’s programmes made in the public
and private sectors, i.e. BBC and commercial
television. The duration of a typical
scene in a public children’s show lasted
over 70% longer than in a commercially
produced show. Children’s television programmes
increasingly demand constant
attentional shifts by their viewers but do
not require them to pay prolonged attentional
shifts to given events.
Researchers
are now asking if it is possible that television’s
conditioning of short attentional span
may be related to some school children’s
attentional deficits in later classroom settings
and whether the recent increase of
attention deficit disorders in school age
children might be a natural reaction to our
modern speeded-up culture – an attention
deficit culture. Could it be the form, not
the content, of television that is unique?
Television is the perfect medium to produce
strong rewards for paying attention
to something. Compared to the pace with
which real life unfolds and is experienced
by young children, television portrays life
with the fast-forward button fully pressed.
Rapidly changing images, scenery and
events, and high-fidelity sounds are highly
stimulating and extremely interesting.
Television is the flavour enhancer of the
audiovisual world, providing unnatural
levels of sensory stimulation. Little in real
life is comparable to this. Television may
overpay the child for paying attention to it,
and in so doing it may physically corrupt
the reward system underpinning his ability
to pay attention when the TV is off.
The actual currency used to pay off and
corrupt the reward system may come in
the form of the neurotransmitter, dopamine.
The release of dopamine in the brain is
associated with reward. In particular,
dopamine is seen as rewarding us for paying
attention, especially to things that are
novel and stimulating. Screen entertainment
causes our brain to release dopamine.
It is increasingly clear that ADHD is linked
to a change in dopamine functioning. Genes
necessary for synthesis, uptake and binding
have been implicated in ADHD, and
dopamine underfunctioning is also found
in the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat
animal model of ADHD. This underfunctioning
of dopamine may fail to reward
the brain’s attention systems, so they do
not function effectively (Sagvolden et al,
2005). Interestingly, adults with attention
deficit disorder given dopamine-boosting
methylphenidate (Ritalin) before doing a
maths test find it easier to concentrate.
This is partly because the task seems more
interesting.
More research is needed into the extent
to which this reward system involving
dopamine (and other neurotransmitters) is
set in childhood by exposure to electronic
media such as television.
Early exposure to television is now
implicated in another childhood condition.
The very latest research from Cornell
University strongly suggests that early
childhood television viewing may be an
important trigger for autism, the incidence
of which appears to be increasing (Waldman
et al, 2006).
At the other end of the age spectrum, a
new study (Lindstrom et al, 2005) addressing
the relationships between how much
television we watch during our middle
years (20-60 yrs) and the development of
Alzheimer’s disease are concluding that
for each additional daily hour of middleadulthood
television viewing, the associated
risk of Alzheimer’s disease development
increases. Watching television was
described by the neuroscientists as a nonintellectually
stimulating activity for
brain function. A study examining the
association between soap operas, talk shows
and poorer cognition in older women found
clinically significant cognitive impairment
in all measures, including attention,
memory and psychomotor speed (Fogel and
Carlson, 2006)....
Television viewing among children
under three years of age is found to have
deleterious effects on mathematical ability,
reading recognition and comprehension in
later childhood. Along with television viewing
displacing educational and play activities,
it is suspected this harm may be due
to the visual and auditory output from the
television actually affecting the child’s
rapidly developing brain.
A 26-year study,
tracking children from birth, has recently
concluded that television viewing in childhood
and adolescence is associated with
poor educational achievement by 26 years
of age (Hancox et al, 2005). Early exposure
to television may have long-lasting adverse
consequences for educational achievement
and later socioeconomic status and wellbeing.
The authors describe a dose-response
relationship between the amount of television
watched and declining educational
performance which has ‘biological plausibility’.
Significant long-term effects
occurred even at so-called modest levels of
television viewing: between one and two
hours per day.
http://aricsigman.com/IMAGES/VisualVoodoo.pdf
Television viewing among children
under three years of age is found to have
deleterious effects on mathematical ability,
reading recognition and comprehension in
later childhoodI
At the other end of the age spectrum, a
new study (Lindstrom et al, 2005) addressing
the relationships between how much
television we watch during our middle
years (20-60 yrs) and the development of
Alzheimer’s disease are concluding that
for each additional daily hour of middleadulthood
television viewing, the associated
risk of Alzheimer’s disease development
increases.
My mother if she did not and still love TV watching for many hours a day with special note of her soup operas would not now be showing some signs of mental decline at 91.
Did you miss the part about the deleterious effect on mathematical ability being due to TV watching by children under the age of 3?
parents really should consider the warnings for not allowing it at all, and the reasons given for these warnings.
You have a tendency to try to turn things into a black/white argument
I don't think tv watching is in any way causative of obesity, though I'm sure it correlates because of associated behaviors - not moving around when not watching tv, and eating loads of junk over and over while watching.
Beyond displacing physical activity, a new
study (Cooper et al, 2006) has reported a
significant dose-response relationship in
which REE [resting metabolic rate]
decreased as average weekly hours of TV
viewing increased. A recent study looking
at the association between television viewing
and meal frequency adds to the findings
that watching television makes both
children and adults eat significantly more,
even if they are not physically hungry.
One of the mechanisms by which television
may induce us to eat more is through
causing our brain to monitor external nonfood
cues – the television screen – as
opposed to internal food cues telling us
that we have eaten enough and can stop.
Experiments (Epstein et al, 1977) have
found that when distracted in this way
humans continue to salivate unnaturally
in response to more and more food when
normally they would not. All of these
observations occur at a time in our history
when 75% of dinners are eaten in front of
the television.
http://aricsigman.com/IMAGES/VisualVoodoo.pdf
Bullshit those warnings are as valid or as invalid as the warnings from the 1950s and hint the claims from the 1950s was nonsense.
TV watching may also induce people to eat more
