Lead author and PhD candidate Joshua Granek and colleagues concluded that the reorganization of the brain鈥檚 cortical network, which聽they discovered in the young men with significant video game-playing experience, gave them an advantage not only in playing video games but also in performing other complex visuomotor tasks.

The authors wrote that other studies have suggested that individuals skilled in video game-playing have a more efficient brain network for controlling movement that includes the prefrontal, premotor, primary sensorimotor and parietal cortices.

Senior investigator Lauren Sergio, a professor in 91亚色鈥檚 School of Kinesiology and Health Science in the Faculty of Health, told the press that using high-resolution brain imaging, they were able to measure which brain areas were active at given times during the experiment. And, she said, rather than just looking at brain activity, they also 鈥渢ested how the skills learned from video game experience can transfer over to new tasks鈥�.

A key result was finding that during the increasingly difficult tasks, the less experienced video game players relied mostly on the parietal cortex (the brain area typically involved in hand-eye coordination), while the brain scans of the experienced gamers showed more activity in the prefrontal cortex at the front of the brain.

The study was also covered in on Sept. 27, on Sept. 26., Sept. 27 and on Sept. 26.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, with files courtesy of YFile 鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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Playing video games for hours on end may prepare young Billy to become a laparoscopic surgeon one day, a study from 91亚色 has shown.

The findings, published online in the journal , demonstrate that playing video games reorganizes the brain鈥檚 activity and can lead to better control of skilled movements. Alterations to the brain鈥檚 cortical network in young men who have significant experience playing video games gives them an advantage not only in playing the games, the study concludes, but in performing other dissociated visuomotor tasks.

The most common example of a dissociated visuomotor task聽鈥� in which visual information received by the brain is dissociated from the required motor action聽鈥� is using a mouse while focusing on a computer screen. A much more challenging dissociated visuomotor task would be performing laparoscopic surgery.

The study鈥檚 conclusion that using gaming skills can reorganize how the brain works also offers hope for future research into the problems experienced by patients with early Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, who struggle to complete the simplest visuomotor tasks.

Above: The study compared a group of avid video gamers with those who did not have the experience of playing. Using high-resolution brain imaging, researchers were able to test how skills learned from gaming can transfer to new tasks. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The study compared a group of 13 young men in their 20s, who had played video games at least four hours a week for the previous three years and were very proficient, to a group of 13 young men who did not have that experience. After some training, the subjects were placed in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and asked to do a series of increasingly difficult tasks, such as using a joystick or looking one way while reaching another way. The fMRI machine imaged cortical activity as their brains planned to do the tasks, so the results were not affected by any physical movement.

鈥淏y using high-resolution brain imaging (fMRI), we were able to actually measure which brain areas were activated at a given time during the experiment,鈥� says Lauren Sergio (right),聽a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in 91亚色鈥檚 Faculty of Health.聽 鈥淲e tested how the skills learned from video game experience can transfer over to new tasks, rather than just looking at brain activity while the subject plays a video game.鈥�

Sergio supervised the study by graduate student and lead author Joshua Granek (BSc. Spec. Hons. 鈥�06, MSc. 鈥�08), now a PhD student at 91亚色, and Diana Gorbet (MSc. 鈥�02, PhD 鈥�06), a PhD student at the time. All work in 91亚色鈥檚 .

The parietal cortex is the part of the brain that a person typically relies on most in complex eye-hand tasks to translate what he or she sees into an action, with less reliance on the prefrontal cortex. The study found that in experienced video gamers鈥� brains, there is increased activity in the prefrontal cortex.

鈥淲e had noticed differences in brain activity between two gamers and other subjects in an earlier pilot study. We decided to do a study with an fMRI because we were curious about the differences in brain activity between skilled gamers and people with much less experience,鈥� says Granek. 鈥淭he video gamers exhibited increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is at the very front of the brain. While performing the same task, the less-experienced players聽鈥� the people in the control group聽鈥� used predominantly the parietal cortex, farther back.鈥�

In the聽future, it would be interesting to study if the brain pattern changes are affected by the type of video games a player has used and the actual total number of hours he has played, Granek says, and to study female video gamers, whose brain patterns in earlier studies were different than those of males.

Republished courtesy of YFile 鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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