Witzbold

I'm sure he's not lying about the data that he's collected with regards to decreased brain function while playing games. He's just overinterpreting it.

@sandwiches:
Never hurts. You don't have to read boring works like stuffy "classics", and you don't have to read every minute of the day. Just find something that interests you enough to sit down and read once or twice a week.

Purple Dave

There's room for extrapolation in science, certainly, and sometimes it's required, but it seems unfair to declare yourself an expert on the subject when, given the scope to do so, you have not attempted any long term tests.

Darien_Shields

Fan Death....... I see the makings of a great Korean horror movie.

Seriously though, FD sounds like some serious superstition. Like cats sucking the breath out of babies and such.

Billkwando

After playing videogames I became antisocial.

I lost all my friends.

I became depressed.

I hated all life.

I then killed someone and blamed it on videogames.

What this study suggests is that videogames effected my brain, I say it was the lack of ability to control myself, or having parents that controlled me.

Quick note to the tards, I never killed anyone or went to prison! Although... the rest is probably true...

/me goes schitzoid and cries to sleep

gazz

a: As pretty much all mater, in pretty much any form, is being linked to cancer nowadays, being a typical college kid, I'd quite rather destroy my brain doing something I enjoy, thank you, and...
b: All things considered, Phineas Gage was a pretty swell guy!

Aaron-173

Herminator

Cenobite

brello

droideka

And I am sure that their studies are more reliable than some Doctor. It was made by a whole research center. And besides, even if it was true. if we compared vegetating infront of the TV for 4 hours in a row and playing 7 hours in a row we'll see that playing 7 hours in a row is more useful than sitting infront of the TV.

In addition, there are differences from some games to another. There are shooter games and there are puzzle games and RPG games and so on. Each have diffrent impact on the brain. For example, an RTS game would much more useful than a hack & slash game.

If the game makes you think or involves you emotionally it will help your brain. A game that involves nothing but mashing face buttons will not help your brain but I dont think it will damage it either.

n00bseeker

Bob6k

HAHAHAHA

CEI

Soldrak

Darkest Daze

CEI

LuppyLuptonium

Amiash Loves You

Yuki

Amiash Loves You

Amiash Loves You

UncleScrotar

ohayou_kun

djcoffee

MrSoursop

DaveKap

Metalgear21

dolo54

JoyOfJoys

cringer8

Anyway, anyone who actually believes this study has been playing too many videogames.....

Giantsonic

This guy is a loon, probably only made his study to discourage Taiwanese children from playing games since they're inherently evil for no good reason.

Absent Blue

sandwiches

metadae

[www.cognitiveliberty.org]

However, as the article concludes, there's nothing to explain whether it's the function of the "religious cortex" that makes us believe in a god who does not really exist, or whether a god who does exist created that part of the brain as a way to reward worship. All that's known for certain is that it doesn't light up unless you _are_ worshipping.

Purple Dave

ModernGamer

Also, you know what else decreases blood flow to the brain? Sleeping. So, stop sleeping immediately.

Roller

Now, what would be very interesting is to see how his results on blood flow in the brain while playing violent video games compare to the same after you've just eaten a big meal, or while you're, you know, making room for the next one. I daresay he'll be telling us to starve ourselves in order to prevent brain damage.

Purple Dave

hueg_boss

That sir, should be on a quote of the day calender, for the 1st of Awesome. The 2nd of Awesome will have a printed version of an Ascii ninja.

Ghede

Shadman

DigitalHero

Aesteval

MikeKelley

There's so little data published about this study that it can be completely ignored. What were the controls? The sample size? Did he test four people with one game? Was the game purely reaction based, requiring no decision making or strategy?

...is he jumping to the conclusion that reduced blood flow at that level is harmful? That the brain is in essence choking itself off?

Wow... that's as crazy as fan death... [en.wikipedia.org]

fuchikoma

Oh well, since i'm already doomed, time to play MORE games!

dstg_ll

Even so, I'm thinking this study is, highly flawed. If blood flow is decreased in one part of the brain, it's highly likely that it's increased in another. Besides that, decreased bloodflow in one part of the brain does not necessarily mean you,re, "damaging," that part of your brain. It means you're not using it, like a muscle, it's not good to avoid using it for too terribly long, but not even Olympic runners use their legs constantly, and they certainly aren't damaging their legs.

Ultimately, these sorts of studies don't work, because the people running the studies are going into them with a certain bias. I mean, , oh, he hooked a bunch of people into a brain scanner and made them play videogames, said doctor would not have done that if he didn't expect videogames to have some sort of dramatic effect. Therefore, that's exactly what he was looking for.

WolvenOne

argh

Yuki

...hold i just one minute

how do i know hes not a liar?
He is American after all and American scientists are payed to hate video games by the state of Califaunia.

WW3 will be started by either the Anti-Christ or angry video gamers fighting against censorship (and with our FPS super powers we cant lose)

LordChris915

InsipidWays

I wouldn't recommend going to church. Walking can lead to severe leg problems later in life.

SuperMaxZero

PlayerX

pikachumariachi

v

Oh you dont have to "wonder", you know every pompous ass on here would be saying "SEE >>> SEE TOLD YOU GAMING IS GREAT, TAKE THAT JT AND POLITICIANS AND ANTI GAMING GURUS, WE ROX SAUCE"!

EnigmaNemesis

cmcginn

syronimus

syronimus

Uh, no. Taipei is the capital of Taiwan. There's a very useful site called Wikipedia. You should try using it sometime.

@ShirtNinja:

You must be from the mainland. Or your knee-jerk response to this case of bad science is coming out as bigotry.

I think some of the commenters here are right in saying that if this study, performed under the same rather dubious conditions, produced the complete opposite result, this comment section would be filled with back-slapping and self-congratulation - "See, gaming is good for you! It stimulates brain activity!"

These findings are rightly being dismissed as incomplete and inconclusive, but I have to wonder if there would been nearly as much ridicule (and mocking of China, which some seem to have trouble distinguishing with Taiwan) if it had cast gaming in a positive light.

concrete_d

Yuki

the logic center.

What The Geek

supercrap

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

zakufever

chaotic_x

adolfo-gomez

Tadashi

Sollus

pixelante_ninja

Green-clad Gamer Dude

A small test group isn't uncommon for neurological studies - it's not cheap to run tests on the brain. Nevertheless, this story is total bunk - there's no data comparing gaming to other activities. I'm a science nerd, and until I see a comparison of blood flow while playing video games to blood flow while doing other passive activities, I remain skeptical.

What The Geek

AqueousBeef

htd

CarbonatedWater

Tale

And it's shocking how few of you actually comprehended the little report. He said there is no evidence to suggest that having less blood-flow in the frontal lobe will, over time, damage it.

MrSoursop

Or if someone's already used that joke, how about this one?

Itchy. Tasty.

AlKusanagi

Wyld

Norellicus

Seven Is Darker

Driving a car? Shooting a gun? Washing your face? Typing on KOTAKU *zoiks*? Watching TV?

EnigmaNemesis

Mr.SithNinja

firesign

0ldb0y

me play GTA lots of times and mine brain works good still!

HawaiianActor

Doomstalk

[codebloo.net]

SuperMekman

So what game were they playing? WOW? Only MMORPGs seem to affect the Chinese. Maybe the test equipment was covered in lead. Oh, control variables.

Aragashi

zato1

Maybe if he had a sample of several thousand, a respected position, conclusive evidence and was less scaremonger-y and more professional I'd listen to him. But probably not :D

RandolphCarter

Algebraic Penguins

GamerBunny

DCPlayaPride

No, it was destined for mockery either way. You must be new here.

*checks post history* Yup.

Billkwando

Of course this stupid has to be wrong because some 14 year old who calls people a f**got constantly on Halo 3 says so.

frankstallone

Fact is, games have been around for more than 15 years. I have plenty of friends who have played video games for several hours a day, if not all day, and they are very social. I'm sure many of you can agree to this. It just seems to me that the doctor is trying to make this test prove the ancient gamer stereotype. Why else would he mention that the decreased blood flow in the frontal lobe has a link to schizophrenia and depression.

The test itself is small, incomplete, and it doesn't feel at all representative of the current gamer population.

babbleon

SBB

These individuals were tested for 30 minutes. Was there another group of people subject to other activities, like watching TV, using the internet, or reading a book? If not, why not? If so, did blood flow in the brain change as well?

Please don't mistake this flawed study as an example of science. Scientific experiments are far more in-depth. This study is a sham.

Langis

SuperMaxZero

You misunderstand me - my concern wasn't how individual people's blood flow compared, but rather, how the decrease in blood flow to the frontal lobe while playing video games compared to the decrease in blood flow while, let's say, knitting. Perhaps video games are no more dangerous to the frontal lobe than typing, but without any data relating these findings to blood flow during any other activity, there's just no way for us to know.

What The Geek

And would it result in loss of control over impulses or loss of impulses?

Spiderbait

latinogamer

dv8godd

actually with a within subjects study, the study can have a smaller sample size. And finding an effect with a smaller sample size actually suggests that the effect is rather robust and not subject statistical biases. In the end, brain imaging research is very very expensive, so they often rely on much smaller sample sizes. There may be some reason to question the study on the basis of the sample size, but this research is consistent with other findings.

graddy

jayntampa

StrikerGold

Darkhadou

Maldron

You don't need a control group with a within subjects design (which is the design this experiment was using). Within subject designs are better than between subjects, as they look for changes within the individual, rather than across individuals. So what they did was measure brain-blood flow before, during and after playing the game. This allows for you to look for changes in the individual across time due to the manipulation.

That being said, the conclusions that the Dr. draws are a little extreme. There is no reason to believe that temporary decreases in brain-blood flow will really be problematic in the long-term. Sure people with schizophrenia have similar patterns of brain activity, but that does not mean that video game players will become chronically affected with impulse control problems. Rather what this study suggests is that video games temporarily reduce brain activity in areas of the brain associated with self-control and emotional sensitivity. But we already knew that video games (especially violent video games) cause this type of effect through behavioral studies. This study just provides a neural basis for those findings.

graddy

Only 30 people were studied, with this size sample findings can be easily skewed. Also, do we know how much the blood flow is decreased and if that is actually affecting the brain function of those areas? All findings of this sort should ALWAYS be taken skeptically at first because most of these stories are released at early points of a study in order to gain publicity and get more funding.

BlindEagle

IanC

Krackatoa

dv8godd

ShirtNinja

blood flow diminishes from multiple areas of the brain when you are not using them, this does not equate to brain damage, instead it is a way for the brain to cope with the demands of brain areas that are active. Active areas preferentially get increased blood flow at the expense of areas that are not being used a lot. Because the brain is incompressible yada yada yada

take every study with a grain of salt

jaggeddreams1185

zakufever

I can see him now, protesting in congress saying that video games turn us into flesh eating zombies.

Hmm.. that sounds like a video game plot right there...

huginn

Seriously, tell these "researchers" (who obviously don't play video games in the first place) to keep their over-paid hands off of our controllers and away from our entertainment venue. :)

infect3dph03nix

MURDERFACE

colonelskatman

budash2

Pezdispenser

You, sir, have just been nominated for "A Week in Comments."

PapaBear434

crazyscreenwriter

Agreed. And I doubt your own body would decrease the blood flow to that part of the brain to the point that damage would actually occur, even on a long term basis. That's my non-expert view, so don't bite me....

cyhborg

Makes sense. Schizophrenia because they are playing as a character, not themselves. Depression because they were getting owned at whatever game they were playing.

tozza

i'm guilty of being a fan of the series, but luckily i'm only 23

zakufever

tehFluffz

BtownDesignGuy

XFiraga001

Elderwulf

phanstar70

Ah ha ha.... ha.... that's a joke, right?

...right? o.o

Ichidou

parad0x360

now pay me my money Tecmo

BigChiefSmokem

HarrisonHopkins

No, thanks, I'll keep my videogames and the damage to my brain. Because actually living without them would really damage it.

Flanker

HE'S STROKING OUT! GET A CRASH CART!

PapaBear434

Hope the conclusions will be positive. I'd probably continue gaming anyway, though. Little left to lose of my poor brain

MrSoursop

rainofwalrus

unstoppablemoo

SupaPhly

KaneTaker

cleotis_max

This explains a lot. Just the other day I forgot how to use scissors. And last week, I had an hour-long conversation with an hallucination. Video games damaged my brain! Now, who the hell do I sue?

cringer8

Nitemare1

Am I open to the possibility that games can have a negative effect on the brain? Sure. Is this guy the one to tell us about it? Not likely.

Where's the control? What sort of effect does watching tv, or reading a book have on blood flow to the frontal lobe?

What The Geek

ShawnC++

Who cares? Assassin's Creed is worth a little drain bramage.

PapaBear434

TitillatedOcelot

wonderwes

First Doom and other shooters make me violent. Now this. I am in terrible trouble now!

RadicalSniper99

I'll be taking all my brain damage now thanks.

supershavin

Cucco

And didn't Macleans make the argument that blood flow to the brain increases while standing on your head?

Solution: 25 year olds, please stand on your head while playing video games. Unless it's Brain Age.

Tonx

Moonshadow101

metadae

Candlejack

BlackDove

teh_sideburns

Ballaboy311

bitefight

noliferuin (PSN+XBL)