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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