I Knew It! Gamers Have Bigger Brains!
Space Fortress, the video game created for the University of Illinois study.
All this time, I guess I’ve been studying. According to a new study, games have specific brain structures that are larger than non-gamers, and the size of these structures is directly related to success at certain tasks. The study, conducted at the University of Illinois and published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, used a specifically designed video game called “Space Fortress” to measure activity in specific areas of the brain. Researchers found that expert gamers in general had larger “nucleus accumbens” than non-gamers, and that those with larger nucleus accumbens performed better at the tasks assigned to them in the study.
While you could easily sum up the findings by saying that gamers are better at games than non-gamers, the study obviously has a more detailed explanation. According to PhysOrg.com, the study “adds to the evidence that specific parts of the striatum, a collection of distinctive tissues tucked deep inside the cerebral cortex, profoundly influence a person’s ability to refine his or her motor skills, learn new procedures, develop useful strategies and adapt to a quickly changing environment.”
In other words, playing a game has a measurable affect on learning. No wonder that I am such a geinius… er, genius.
Source: PhysOrg.com
