The brain changes throughout life and is shaped by the things we do. So it’s not hard to imagine that gaming is also making its mark in the organic think tank.
– Can gaming change the way the brain works ?, asks young Jonathan from the Science Club, which is a free leisure offer for children and young people, where they as mini-researchers can learn about the world of science.
– It could be mega fat if the brain, for example, got better at solving problems by playing, he continues.
Anne Fiskaali is a psychologist and researcher at Aarhus University. She is both a researcher in gaming and is also a gamer herself.
– As soon as we learn something new, the brain changes because it makes new connections, she tells Videnskab.dk.
The brain forms connections, also called synapses, between the brain cells, so that in the future it is quicker to respond to the new it has learned.
– That way, yes, the brain changes because we may learn something new when we sit down with a game we have not played before. Or if we play an extra difficult match, where we suddenly have to pull out some moves and skills that we have not used before, says Anne Fiskaali.
Gaming is still fairly new and there have not been many years to research what effects it has.
Therefore, researchers are cautious when commenting on what gaming can make us better at. One of the things we seem to be getting better at is multitasking – keeping track of multiple things at once.
– There is a hypothesis that we practice processing a lot of information at the same time. We get a lot of information, both in terms of what we can hear and see, and we have to keep track of things in the game, says Anne Fiskaali.
She says that most games are actually about solving problems, and it is therefore an ability that one can practice by playing.
– Many of these games suggest that you just have to solve problems along the way. It may be that you have a strategy in Counter-Strike, but it is also the team you play against that can destroy the original strategy, and what do you do then ?, she says.
Another who also researches gaming and the brain is Andreas Lieberoth, associate professor at the Danish Institute for Pedagogy and Education at Aarhus University.
He focuses on neuropsychology, which means that he examines the specific mechanisms in the brain that are activated when we gamer. He agrees with what Anne Fiskaali says.
– The brain becomes, in classical brain researcher language, what it does. If you do some things very much, the brain will also change accordingly, he explains and adds:
– If you play a computer game where you run and jump, or where you run around and try to find enemies that you can shoot, the parts of our brain that are involved in these cognitive processes are sharpened.