Your brain on video games | Daphne Bavelier

Summary

In this insightful talk, a brain scientist explores the impact of video games on cognitive functions, challenging common misconceptions. Contrary to the belief that excessive gaming leads to attention problems and poor eyesight, research shows that action-packed games can enhance vision, attention span, and even mental rotation abilities. The speaker argues that video games, when played in moderation, can have positive effects on the brain, similar to the benefits of wine when consumed responsibly. The goal is to create engaging games that incorporate 'brain broccoli' to promote learning and rehabilitation, bridging the gap between entertainment and cognitive enhancement.

Takeaways

• 🧠 The speaker is a brain scientist interested in how the brain learns and the possibility of enhancing cognitive abilities through video games.
• 🎮 Video games are not just for children; the average gamer is 33 years old, and the gaming demographic is shifting towards older adults.
• 📈 The impact of video games on society is significant, as evidenced by the massive amount of time spent playing games like 'Call Of Duty: Black Ops'.
• 🎯 Contrary to common belief, action video games can improve vision by enhancing the ability to resolve small details and different levels of gray.
• 🤓 The speaker challenges the assumption that video games lead to attention problems, showing that gamers can resolve conflicts faster and have better attention spans.
• 🔍 Action video games can improve the efficiency of brain networks responsible for attention, including the parietal cortex, frontal lobe, and anterior cingulate.
• 🚗 Gamers excel at multitasking and can switch between tasks quickly with minimal cost, unlike those who engage in multimedia-tasking.
• 🧐 The effects of video games on the brain are nuanced and require scientific measurement rather than relying on general wisdom or assumptions.
• 🍇 The benefits of video games are similar to those of wine; when used in moderation, they can have positive effects on health and cognitive function.
• 🧩 The speaker emphasizes the need for collaboration between brain scientists and the entertainment software industry to create games that are both engaging and beneficial for cognitive development.
• 🛠️ Ongoing research aims to identify the 'active ingredients' in video games that promote brain plasticity, learning, and attention to inform the development of educational and rehabilitative games.

Q & A

What is the average age of a video game player according to the transcript?

The average age of a video game player is 33 years old, not eight years old as commonly assumed.

What impact does playing action video games have on eyesight according to the research mentioned in the script?

Contrary to the common belief that screen time worsens eyesight, the research indicates that people who play action video games for several hours a week have better vision, especially in resolving small details and different levels of gray.

How does playing action video games affect attention and distractability?

The script suggests that playing action video games does not lead to attention problems or greater distractability. In fact, players of these games tend to resolve conflicts faster and have improved attention span and tracking abilities.

What is the role of the parietal cortex, frontal lobe, and anterior cingulate in attention control, as mentioned in the script?

The parietal cortex controls the orientation of attention, the frontal lobe controls how we sustain attention, and the anterior cingulate is responsible for how we allocate, regulate attention, and resolve conflict.

What is the counterintuitive finding about the effects of action video games on multitasking abilities?

The counterintuitive finding is that people who play a lot of action video games are actually very good at multitasking, switching tasks quickly and with minimal cost.

What is the comparison made between the effects of wine and video games on health in the script?

The comparison made is that, like wine, video games can have both positive and negative effects on health. When consumed in reasonable doses and at the right age, wine can be beneficial, and similarly, action video games can have powerful effects on brain plasticity, learning, and attention.

What is the purpose of conducting training studies in the context of the research mentioned in the script?

The purpose of conducting training studies is to demonstrate that by forcing individuals to play action games, researchers can change aspects such as vision for the better, which is crucial for rehabilitation or educational purposes.

What is the challenge faced by researchers in creating games that are both educational and entertaining?

The challenge is to combine the 'broccoli' side, which refers to the beneficial ingredients in games, with the 'chocolate' side, which refers to the entertaining aspect that makes games irresistible to players.

How does the script address the misconception that video games are only for children?

The script addresses this misconception by stating that 90% of children play video games, but the average age of a gamer is 33, and the demographics of future video game players are older adults.

What is the role of brain imaging in the research discussed in the script?

Brain imaging is used to observe the impact of video games on the brain, particularly noting changes in the brain networks that control attention, such as the parietal cortex, frontal lobe, and anterior cingulate.

Outlines

00:00

🕹️ The Impact of Video Games on Brain and Behavior

The speaker, a brain scientist, explores the potential of video games to enhance cognitive abilities such as learning, memory, and processing speed. They challenge the common perception that video games are primarily for children, noting that the average gamer is 33 years old and that gaming is becoming increasingly popular among older adults. The speaker also addresses the widespread belief that video games are harmful, citing statistics from Activision to highlight the immense amount of time people spend playing games like 'Call of Duty: Black Ops.' They argue that instead of dismissing video games, we should consider how they can be leveraged positively, particularly action-packed shooter games, which have been shown to have beneficial effects on vision, attention, and cognitive function when played in moderation.

05:02

🎮 Debunking Myths: Video Games and Cognitive Enhancement

This paragraph delves into the scientific research surrounding video games, specifically action games, and their impact on cognitive abilities. Contrary to the myth that screen time deteriorates eyesight, the speaker reveals that frequent action game players have superior vision, being able to discern small details and different levels of gray—qualities that can be beneficial in real-life situations like driving in foggy conditions. The speaker also discusses how action game players excel in attention-related tasks, such as resolving conflicts between word meanings and ink colors, and tracking multiple objects simultaneously. These findings suggest that action games can enhance visual and attentional skills, rather than causing attention problems as commonly believed.

10:03

🧠 The Neurological Benefits of Action Video Games

The speaker discusses the neurological changes observed in individuals who frequently play action video games. They explain how brain imaging studies have shown that action game players have more efficient brain networks related to attention, including the parietal cortex for orienting attention, the frontal lobe for sustaining attention, and the anterior cingulate for allocating and regulating attention. The speaker also addresses the misconception about multitasking and its negative effects on attention, contrasting it with the positive impact of action games on the ability to switch between tasks quickly and efficiently. They emphasize the importance of distinguishing between different types of media and their distinct effects on cognition and perception.

15:04

🚀 Harnessing Video Games for Rehabilitation and Education

The speaker outlines the potential applications of video games in education and rehabilitation, highlighting the need for long-lasting effects. They describe a study where participants improved in mental rotation tasks after playing action games for 10 hours over two weeks, with the benefits persisting even five months later. The speaker acknowledges the challenge of combining the 'broccoli' (the beneficial cognitive elements) with the 'chocolate' (the entertainment value) to create games that are both educational and engaging. They conclude by emphasizing the collaborative effort required between brain scientists and the entertainment software industry to develop games that can positively impact brain function and behavior.

Keywords

💡Brain Scientist

A brain scientist is a researcher who studies the brain, its functions, and its potential for development. In the context of the video, the speaker, a brain scientist, is exploring how video games can influence brain function and potentially enhance cognitive abilities such as learning, memory, and attention. The speaker's role is central to the video's theme, as they discuss the impact of video games on the brain and behavior.

💡Video Games

Video games are electronic games that involve interaction between the player and a user interface to generate visual feedback on a screen. The video's theme revolves around the effects of video games on the brain. The speaker challenges common misconceptions about video games, particularly action-packed shooter games, and presents evidence of their positive effects on vision, attention, and cognitive function.

💡Action Video Games

Action video games are a genre of video games that emphasize fast-paced action, hand-eye coordination, and quick decision-making. The speaker uses this term to refer to games that have a significant impact on cognitive abilities such as attention and visual acuity. The video discusses how playing these games can improve players' ability to resolve small details and track multiple objects, which are important for everyday tasks like driving.

💡Cognitive Abilities

Cognitive abilities refer to the various mental processes such as perception, memory, attention, and problem-solving that enable learning and intelligence. The video discusses how playing video games can enhance certain cognitive abilities, such as the ability to resolve conflicts quickly, track multiple objects, and improve visual acuity in cluttered environments.

💡Attention

Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. The video demonstrates that playing action video games can improve attentional capacity, as evidenced by the ability to resolve conflicts faster and track more objects simultaneously. This is related to the video's theme by showing that video games can have a positive impact on cognitive functions.

💡Mental Rotation

Mental rotation is a cognitive task that involves the ability to mentally manipulate and rotate objects in one's mind. In the video, the speaker uses mental rotation as an example of a task that can be improved through action video game training. The video shows that after playing action games, individuals perform better on mental rotation tasks, indicating enhanced spatial reasoning skills.

💡Brain Plasticity

Brain plasticity, or neuroplasticity, is the brain's ability to change and adapt as a result of experience. The video suggests that action video games can promote brain plasticity by enhancing cognitive functions such as attention and vision. The speaker's research aims to identify the 'active ingredients' in video games that contribute to these positive changes in the brain.

💡Multimedia-Tasking

Multimedia-tasking refers to the practice of engaging in multiple forms of media simultaneously, such as listening to music while browsing the web or chatting on social media. The video contrasts the effects of multimedia-tasking with those of playing action video games, suggesting that the latter can improve attention and cognitive function, while the former may not have the same benefits.

💡Vision

Vision is the ability to perceive and interpret information from the environment through the eyes. The video discusses how playing action video games can improve vision, particularly the ability to resolve small details and differentiate between different levels of gray. This is demonstrated through the speaker's research, which shows that frequent action game players have better vision than non-players.

💡Cognitive Enhancement

Cognitive enhancement refers to the process of improving cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and problem-solving. The video's theme is closely tied to cognitive enhancement, as the speaker explores how video games can be leveraged to make our brains 'smarter, better, and faster.' The speaker's research aims to understand and harness the positive effects of video games on cognitive abilities.

💡Training Studies

Training studies are research methodologies that involve training participants on a specific task or activity to measure changes in performance or abilities. In the video, the speaker discusses training studies where participants play action video games for a set amount of time and then are tested on tasks like mental rotation to measure improvements. These studies are crucial for understanding the long-term effects of video games on cognitive functions.

Highlights

Video games have a significant impact on everyday life and are becoming more popular among older adults.

Contrary to common belief, playing video games can improve vision, particularly in resolving small details and different levels of gray.

Action video game players have better attentional abilities, including faster conflict resolution and improved object tracking.

Brain imaging studies show that action game players have more efficient brain networks related to attention.

The effects of video games on the brain are similar to the effects of wine on health; both can be beneficial in reasonable doses.

Action video games can improve mental rotation skills, which can last for months after the training.

The speaker emphasizes the need for collaboration between brain scientists and the entertainment software industry to create effective and engaging games.

The average age of a gamer is 33, not 8, indicating that video gaming is not just a children's activity.

Activision's 'Call Of Duty: Black Ops' was played for 68,000 years worldwide after one month of release, highlighting the game's popularity.

The speaker challenges the audience to reconsider their views on video games by comparing them to more traditionally accepted activities like Sudoku or reading Shakespeare.

Video games can be leveraged to develop games for patients with low vision, aiding in brain retraining for better sight.

The speaker refutes the claim that video games lead to attention problems, showing instead that they can enhance attentional capacities.

High multimedia-taskers are poor at actual multitasking, contrary to their self-perception.

Action video game players excel at switching tasks quickly, which is an important skill for activities like driving.

The speaker calls for a new type of game that combines the educational benefits of 'brain games' with the engaging nature of entertainment games.

The speaker concludes by emphasizing the potential of video games in education and rehabilitation, and the need for further research and development.

Transcripts

Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast

I'm a brain scientist, and as a brain scientist,

I'm actually interested in how the brain learns,

and I'm especially interested in a possibility of

making our brains smarter, better and faster.

This is in this context I'm going to tell you

about video games. When we say video games,

most of you think about children.

It's true. Ninety percent 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 of you. The average age of a gamer is 33 years old,

not eight years old, and in fact, if we look

at the projected demographics of video game play,

the video game players of tomorrow are

older adults. (Laughter)

So video [gaming] 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 the case

about doing linear algebra?

So what we are asking in the lab is, how can we leverage that power?

Now I want to step back a bit.

I know most of you have had the experience of coming back

home and finding your kids playing these kinds of games.

(Shooting noises) The name of the game is to get

after your enemy zombie bad guys

before they get to you, right?

And I'm almost sure most of you have 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 had 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,

those 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're 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 measure 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 vision scientists among you.

We actually know how to test that statement.

We can step into the lab and measure how good your vision is.

Well, guess what? People that don't play a lot

of action games, that don't actually spend a lot of time

in front of screens, have normal, or what we call

corrective-to-normal vision. That's okay.

The issue is 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.

And it's better in two different ways.

The first way is that they're actually able to resolve

small detail in the context of clutter, and though that means

being able to read the fine print on a prescription

rather than using magnifier glasses, you can actually do it

with just your eyesight.

The other way that they are better is actually being able

to resolve different levels of gray.

Imagine you're driving in a 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 problems and greater distractability.

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. I'm going to show you

colored words. I want you to shout out the color of the ink.

Right? So this is the first example.

["Chair"]

Orange, good. ["Table"] Green.

["Board"] Audience: Red.Daphne Bavelier: Red.

["Horse"] DB: Yellow. Audience: Yellow.

["Yellow"] DB: Red. Audience: Yellow.

["Blue"] DB: Yellow.

Okay, you get my point, right? (Laughter)

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

you resolve that conflict, so the young guys here

at the top of their game probably, like, did a little better

than some of us that are older.

What we can show is that when you do this kind of task

with people that play a lot of action games,

they actually resolve the conflict faster.

So clearly playing those action games doesn't lead

to attention problems.

Actually, those action video game players have

many other advantages 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

little tasks 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 a recess

during the winter. Most kids are happy. It's actually recess.

But a few kids are sad and blue because they've forgotten their coat.

Everybody begins to move around, and your task

is to keep track of who had a coat 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,

you can track, and then when it stops, and there is

a question mark, and I ask you, did this kid have a coat or not?

Was it yellow initially or blue?

I hear a few yellow. Good. So most of you have a brain. (Laughter)

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 move your eyes. 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 or blue?

Audience: Yellow.DB: 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 players.

A bit more challenging, right? (Laughter)

Yellow or blue? Blue. We have some people

that are serious out there. Yeah. (Laughter)

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 games 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 the parietal cortex

which is very well known to control the orientation of attention.

The other one is the frontal lobe, which controls

how we sustain attention, and another one

is the anterior cingulate, which controls how we allocate

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 a rather counterintuitive finding

in the literature about technology and the brain.

You all know about multitasking. You all have been faulty

of multitasking when you're driving

and you pick up your cellphone. Bad idea. Very bad idea.

Why? Because as your attention shifts to your cell phone,

you are actually losing the capacity to react swiftly

to the car braking 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 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.

They 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 revered by society,

which are people that engage in multimedia-tasking.

What is multimedia-tasking? It's the fact that most of us,

most of our children, are engaged with listening to music

at the same time as they're doing search on the web

at the same time as they're chatting on Facebook with their friends.

That's a multimedia-tasker.

There was a first study done by colleagues at Stanford

and that we replicated that showed that

those people that identify as being high multimedia-taskers

are absolutely abysmal at multitasking.

When we measure them in the lab, they're really bad.

Right? So these kinds of results really

makes two main points.

The first one is that not all media are created equal.

You can't compare the effect of multimedia-tasking

and the effect of playing action games. They have

totally different effects on different aspects of cognition,

perception and attention.

Even within video games, I'm telling you right now

about these 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 showed that to you already, like we looked at the fact that

despite a lot of screen time, those action gamers

have a lot of very good vision, etc.

Here, what was really striking is that these undergraduates

that actually report engaging in a lot of high

multimedia-tasking are convinced they aced the test.

So you show them their data, you show them they are bad

and they're 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

to the effect of wine on the health.

There are some very poor uses of wine. There are some

very poor uses 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 for rehabilitation of patients.

Now because we are interested in having an impact

for education or rehabilitation of patients, we are actually

not that interested in how those of you that choose

to play video games for many hours on end perform.

I'm much more interested in taking any of you

and showing that by forcing you to play an action game,

I can actually change your vision for the better,

whether you want to play that action game or not, right?

That's the point of rehabilitation or education.

Most of the kids don't go to school saying,

"Great, two hours of math!"

So that's really the crux of the research, and to do that,

we need to go one more step.

And one more step is to do training studies.

So let me illustrate that step with

a 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 to 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 that I asked you to do that is because

you really feel your brain cringing, right?

It doesn't really feel like playing mindless action video games.

Well, what we do in these training studies is, people

come to the lab, they do tasks like this one,

we then force them to play 10 hours of action games.

They don't play 10 hours of action games in a row.

They do distributed practice, so little shots of 40 minutes

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 mental rotation task. So this is work from a colleague

in Toronto. What they showed is that, initially,

you know, subjects perform where they are 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 rehabilitation. 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, to put 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 are brain scientists like me that are beginning

to understand what are the good ingredients in games

to promote positive effects, and 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 the chocolate side of the equation.

The issue is we need to put the two together,

and it's a little bit like with food.

Who really wants to eat chocolate-covered broccoli?

None of you. (Laughter) And you probably have had

that feeling, right, picking up an education game

and sort of feeling, hmm, you know, 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, the good ingredients

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 brain scientists to come and to get together,

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'd like to leave you with that thought,

and thank you for your attention. (Applause)

(Applause)