'Easy Shooter Video Games Could Harm The Brain' Claims Research

Simple video games, includingmodern military shooters, could damage your brain, according to research which argues regular gamers have less grey-matter in a vital part of their brain.

They argue gamers end up with smaller amounts of matter in their hippocampus, a major part of the brain which protects against brain illnesses and diseases, ranging from depression to Alzheimer's.

Scientists from the Université de Montréal think that if people play games that do not have inbuilt GPS systems for the maps, their brains will stand up to more hours of gaming.  

Most First Person Shooter games, popular amongst members of the Armed Forces, however, involve maps with pathfinding or waypoint helper and the study suggests that they could be at a greater risk than if they played Mario. 

In the study, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, lead author Greg West, an associate professor of psychology, reveals that habitual players of action games have less grey matter in their hippocampus.

Professor West said: 

 "Video games have been shown to benefit certain cognitive systems in the brain, mainly related to visual attention and short-term memory. But there is also behavioral evidence that there might be a cost to that, in terms of the impact on the hippocampus."

"That's why we decided to do a full neuro-imaging study, scanning the brains of habitual players of action video games and comparing them to non-players, and what we saw was less gray matter in the hippocampus of habitual players.

"We then followed that up with two longitudinal studies to establish causality, and we found that it was indeed the gaming that led to changes in the brain."

The hippocampus is the part of the brain that helps people to orient themselves, spatial memory, and to remember past experiences.  

Another important part of the brain, the caudate nucleus, acts as a kind of "autopilot" and "reward system" - getting us home from work, for example, and telling us when it's time to eat, drink, have sex and do other things that keep us alive and happy.

The caudate nucleus also helps us form habits and remember how to do things like ride a bicycle.

Some argue gaming has been shown to stimulate the caudate nucleus more than the hippocampus.

But, the more they use the caudate nucleus, the less they use the hippocampus, and as a result, the hippocampus loses cells and atrophies, the new study claims.

Prof West added: "If action video games lead to decreases in grey matter in the hippocampus of young adults, caution should be exerted when encouraging their use by children, young adults and older adults to promote cognitive skills such as visual short-term memory and visual attention.

"The results suggest that improvement in such cognitive skills may come at a cost."

To do their investigation, the researchers recruited close to 100 students to come in and play a variety of popular shooter games like Call of Duty, Killzone and Borderlands 2, as well as 3D games from the Super Mario series, for a total of 90 hours.

This led to hippocampal atrophy in response learners, while 90 hours of playing 3D games led to increased grey matter within the hippocampal memory system of all participants.

Prof West added: "Because spatial strategies were shown to be associated with increases in hippocampal grey matter during video game playing, it remains possible that response learners could be encouraged to use spatial strategies to counteract against negative effects on the hippocampal system.

They say that action video games designed without in-game GPS, or wayfinding routes overlaid on the game's display for the player to follow, could better encourage spatial learning during action video game playing.    

Previous studies on video games by Professor Greg West on video games has been criticized by science bloggers as "overhyped" and "should be taken with generous heaps of salt. 

Critics argue that the claim that gamers rely on the caudate nucleus to a greater degree than non-gamers is unsupported by the evidence.