Your brain on video games Daphne Bavelier

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I’m a brain scientist and as a brain

scientist I’m actually interested in how

the brain learns and I’m specially

interested in the possibility of making

our brains smarter better and faster

this is in this context I’m going to

tell you about videogames when we say

videogame most of you think about

children it’s true 90% of children do

play video games but let’s be frank when

the kids are in bed who is in front of

the PlayStation most view the average

age of a gamer is 33 years old not 8

years old and in fact if we look at the

projected demographics a video game play

the video game players of tomorrow are

older adults so video games is pervasive

throughout our society it is clearly

here to stay it has an amazing impact on

our everyday life consider these

statistics released by Activision after

one month of release of the game call of

duty black ops it had been played for

68,000 years worldwide right would any

of you complain if this was a case about

doing a linear algebra so where are we

asking the lab is how can we leverage

that power now I want to step back a bit

I know most of you have had experience

of coming back home and finding your

kids playing these kind of games the

name of the game is to get after your

enemies don’t be bad guys before they

get to you right and I’m almost sure

most of your thought oh come on

can’t you do something more intelligent

than shooting at zombies I’d like you to

put this kind of knee-jerk reaction in

the context of what you would have

thought if you

found your girl playing Sudoku or your

boy reading Shakespeare right most

parents would find that great well I’m

not going to tell you that playing video

games days in and days out is actually

good for your health it’s not and

binging is never good but I’m going to

argue that in reasonable doses actually

the very game I showed you at the

beginning it was action packed shooter

games have quite powerful effects and

positive effects on many different

aspects of our behavior

there’s not one week that goes without

some major headlines in the media about

whether video games are good or bad for

you right you all bombarded with that

I’d like to put this kind of Friday

night bar discussion aside and get you

to actually step into the lab what we do

in the lab is actually measured directly

in a quantitative fashion what is the

impact of video games on the brain and

so I’m going to take a few examples from

our work one first saying that I’m sure

you all have heard is the fact that too

much screen time makes your eyesight

worse that’s a statement about vision

there may be visual scientists among you

we actually know how to test that

statement we can step in into the lab

and measure how good your vision is well

I guess what people that don’t play a

lot of action games that don’t actually

turn a lot of time in front of screens

have normal or what we call corrected to

normal vision that’s okay the issues

what happens with these guys that

actually indulge into playing video

games like five hours per week 10 hours

per week 15 hours per week by that

statement their vision should be really

bad right guess what their vision is

really really good it’s better than

those that don’t play it’s better in two

different ways the first way that they

actually able to resolve small detail in

the context of clutter though that means

being able to read the fine print on

prescription rather than using magnifier

glasses you can actually do it with just

your eyes

the other way that they are better is

actually being able to resolve different

levels of gray imagine you’re driving in

the fog that makes a difference between

seeing the car in front of you and

avoiding the accident or getting into an

accident so we’re actually leveraging

that work to develop games for patients

with low vision and to have an impact on

retraining their brain to see better

clearly when it comes to action video

games screen time doesn’t make your

eyesight worse another saying that I’m

sure you have all heard around video

games lead to attention problem and

greater distractibility okay we know how

to measure attention in the lab I’m

actually going to give you an example of

how we do so I’m going to ask you to

participate so you’re going to have to

actually play the game with me going to

show you colored words I want you to

shout out the color of the ink right so

this is a first example orange good

green red yellow red yellow you got my

point right you’re getting better but

it’s hard why is it hard because I

introduced a conflict between the word

itself and its color how good your

attention is determines actually how

fast resolve that conflict so the young

guys here at the top of their game

probably liked it a little better than

some of us that are older while we can

show that when you do this kind of task

with people that learn a lot of action

games actually resolve the conflict

faster so clearly playing those action

games doesn’t need to attentional

problems actually those actual video

game players have many other advantage

in terms of attention and one aspect of

attention which is also improved for the

better is our ability to track objects

around in the world this is something we

use all the time when you’re driving

you’re tracking keeping track of the

cars around you you’re also keeping

track of the pedestrian the

running dog and that’s how you can

actually be safe driving right in the

lab we get people to come to the lab sit

in front of a computer screen and we

give them a little task that I’m going

to get you to do again you’re going to

see yellow happy faces and a few sad

blue faces these are children in the

schoolyard in Geneva during recess

during the winter most kids are happy

it’s actually recess but a few kids are

sad in blue because they’ve forgotten

that coat everybody begins to move

around and your task is to keep track of

whoo how to quote at the beginning and

who didn’t so I’m just going to show you

an example where there is only one sad

kid it’s easy because you can actually

track it with your eyes you can track

again track and then when it stops and

there’s a question mark and I ask you

did this kid had a coat or not with it

yellow initially or blue

I hear you yellow good so most of you

have a brain I’m now going to ask you to

do the task but now with a little more

challenging task there are going to be

three of them that are blue don’t move

your eyes please don’t know guys

keep your eyes fixated and expand pull

your attention that’s the only way you

can actually do it

if you move your eyes you’re doomed

yellow blue good so your typical normal

young adult can have a span of about

three or four objects of attention

that’s what we just did your action

video game player has a span of about

six to seven objects of attention which

is what is shown in this video here

that’s for you guys action video game

player no more challenging right

yellow blue blue we have some people

that are serious out there yeah good so

in the same way that we actually see the

effects of video games on people’s

behavior we can use brain imaging and

look at the impact of video game on the

brain and we do find many changes but

the main changes are actually to the

brain networks that control attention so

one part is a primal cortex which is

very well known to control the

orientation of attention the other one

is a frontal lobe which

controls how we sustain attention and

another one is the end of your cingulate

which controls how we are locate and

regulate attention and resolve conflict

now when we do brain imaging we find

that all three of these networks are

actually much more efficient in people

that play action games this actually

leads me to rather counterintuitive

finding in the literature about

technology in the brain you all know

about multitasking you all have been

faulty of multitasking when you’re

driving and you pick up your cell phone

bad idea very bad idea why because as

your tension shift to your cell phone

you are actually losing the capacity to

react swiftly to the car breaking in

front of you and so you’re much more

likely to get engaged into a car

accident now we can measure that kind of

skills in the lab we obviously don’t ask

people to drive around and see how many

car accidents they have that would be a

little costly proposition but we design

tasks on the computer where we can

measure to the millisecond accuracy how

good they are at switching from one task

to another when we do that we actually

find that people that play a lot of

action games are really really good

this switch really fast very swiftly

they pay a very small cost now I’d like

you to remember that result and put it

in the context of another group of

Technology users a group which is

actually much referred by society which

are people that engage in multimedia

tasking what is multimedia tasking is

the fact that most of us most of our

children are engaged into listening to

music at the same time as a doing search

on the web at the same time' the

chatting on facebook with their friends

that’s a multimedia Tasker there was a

first study done by colleagues at

Stanford and then we replicated that

showed that those people that identify

as being high multimedia tasks are

absolutely abysmal at multitasking when

we measure them in the lab they’re

really bad right

so this kind of results really makes two

main point

the first one that not all media are

created equal you can’t compare the

effect of multimedia tasking and the

effect of playing action games have

totally different effects on different

aspects of cognition perception an

attention even within video games I’m

telling you right now about this

action-packed video games different

video games have a different effect on

your brains so we actually need to step

into the lab and really measure what is

the effect of each video game the other

lesson is that general wisdom carries no

weight I show that to you already like

we looked at the fact that despite a lot

of screen times those action gamers have

a lot a very good vision etc here what

was really striking is that these

undergrad rates that actually report

engaging a lot of high multimedia

tasking I convinced the aced test so you

show them their data you show them their

bad and like not possible you know they

have this sort of gut feeling that

really they are doing really really good

that’s another argument for why we need

to step into the lab and really measure

the impact of technology on the brain

now in a sense when we think about the

effect of video games on the brain it’s

very similar back to the effect of wine

on the health there are some very poor

use of wine there are some very poor use

of video games but when consumed in

reasonable doses and at the right age

wine can be very good for health there

are actually specific molecules that

have been identified in red wine as

leading to greater life expectancy so

it’s the same way like those action

video games have a number of ingredients

that are actually really powerful for

brain plasticity learning attention

vision etc and so we need and we’re

working on understanding what are those

active ingredients so that we can really

then leverage them to deliver better

games either for education or

rehabilitation of patients now because

we’re interested in having an impact for

education or reputation of patients

actually not that interested in how

those of you that shoes to play video

games for many hours on hand perform I’m

much more interested in taking any of

you and showing that part by forcing you

to play an actual game I can actually

change your vision for the better

whether you want to play that action

game or not right that’s a point of

rehabilitation or education most of the

kids don’t go to schools saying great

you know two hours of math so that’s

really the crux of the research and to

do that we need to go one more step then

one more step is to do training studies

so let me illustrate that step with the

task which is called mental rotation

mental rotation is a task where I’m

going to ask you and again you’re going

to do the task to look at this shape

study it it’s a target shape and I’m

going to present you four different

shapes one of these four different

shapes is actually a rotated version of

this shape I want you to tell me which

one the first one second one third one

or fourth one okay I’ll help you fourth

one one more get those brains working

come on that’s our target shape third

good this is hard right like the reason

I asked you to do that is because you

really fill your brain cringing right

doesn’t really feel like playing a

mindless action video games well while

we’re doing these training studies as

people come to the lab they do tasks

like this one we then force them to play

ten hours of action games they don’t let

ten hours of action game in a row they

do distributed practice so little shots

of 40 minutes if several days over a

period of two weeks then once they are

done with the training they come back a

few days later and they are tested again

on a similar type of a mental rotation

task so this is work from colleague in

Toronto where they showed is that

initially you know subjects perform

where they’re expected to perform given

their age after two weeks of training on

action video games

they actually perform better and the

improvement is still there five months

after having done the training that’s

really really important

why because I told you we want to use

these games for education or for ability

ssin we need to have effects that are

going to be long-lasting now at this

point a number of you are probably

wondering well what are you waiting for

putting on the market a game that would

be good for the attention of my

grandmother and that she would actually

enjoy or a game that would be great to

rehabilitate the vision of my grandson

who has amblyopia for example well we’re

working on it

but here is a challenge there brain

scientists like me that are beginning to

understand what are the good ingredients

in games to promote positive effects

that’s what I’m going to call the

broccoli side of the equation there is

an entertainment software industry which

is extremely deft at coming up with

appealing products that you can’t resist

that’s a chocolate side of the equation

the issues we need to put the two

together and it’s a little bit like with

food we really wants to eat

chocolate-covered broccoli none of you

and you probably have had that feeling

right picking up an education game and

feeling mmm it’s not really fun it’s not

really engaging so what we need is

really a new brand of chocolate a brand

of chocolate that is irresistible that

you really want to play but that has all

the ingredients agouti gradients that

are extracted from the broccoli that you

can’t recognize but are still working on

your brains and we’re working on it but

it takes to come and to get together

brain scientists people that work in the

entertainment software industry and

publishers so these are not people that

usually meet every day but it’s actually

doable and we are on the right track I

like to leave you with that thought and

thank you for your attention

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