OK, this study can’t actually attribute causation, but it suggests gamers have some cognitive advantages.
The longrunning moral panic over videogames has tripped over a beautifully rendered treeroot, by which we mean a study showing gamers perform better on cognitive tasks.
A case-control study in JAMA Network Openanalysed data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a large dataset of 9-10-year-old children from sites across the US.
The team selected 2217 participants and compared their videogamer status (VGs played three hours a day, NVGs not at all) with their performance on cognitive tests (the stop signal task, a test of response inhibition, and the dreaded n-back) and their blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals across various brain areas.
They found the gaming group performed better on both tasks, showing greater accuracy and shorter response times.
The team also found greater BOLD signal among VGs during the stop signal task in the precuneus, a brain region involved in complex functions including attention, cue reactivity, memory, and integration of information.
This is the largest study to date to look at the association between videogaming, cognition and brain function, the authors say, after a research history of very mixed results.
Their results suggest that “VGs are less susceptible to attentional distraction and outperform NVGs on both selection-based and response-based processes, suggesting that enhanced attentional performance in VGs may be underpinned by a greater capacity to suppress or disregard irrelevant stimuli”.
The better n-back results also suggest enhanced visuospatial working memory in videogamers.
They acknowledge that there are many kinds of videogames that may have different effects, and that a study of this design can’t attribute causation.
But it means you can go back to worrying about your kid’s increasing aggression, knowing their brain is probably OK.
Let penny@medicalrepublic.com.au know where she can get her hands on a PS5, please.
