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      Positive Association of Video Game Playing with Left Frontal Cortical Thickness in Adolescents

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          Abstract

          Playing video games is a common recreational activity of adolescents. Recent research associated frequent video game playing with improvements in cognitive functions. Improvements in cognition have been related to grey matter changes in prefrontal cortex. However, a fine-grained analysis of human brain structure in relation to video gaming is lacking. In magnetic resonance imaging scans of 152 14-year old adolescents, FreeSurfer was used to estimate cortical thickness. Cortical thickness across the whole cortical surface was correlated with self-reported duration of video gaming (hours per week). A robust positive association between cortical thickness and video gaming duration was observed in left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left frontal eye fields (FEFs). No regions showed cortical thinning in association with video gaming frequency. DLPFC is the core correlate of executive control and strategic planning which in turn are essential cognitive domains for successful video gaming. The FEFs are a key region involved in visuo-motor integration important for programming and execution of eye movements and allocation of visuo-spatial attention, processes engaged extensively in video games. The results may represent the biological basis of previously reported cognitive improvements due to video game play. Whether or not these results represent a-priori characteristics or consequences of video gaming should be studied in future longitudinal investigations.

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          Most cited references34

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          The Development and Well-Being Assessment: description and initial validation of an integrated assessment of child and adolescent psychopathology.

          The Development and Well-Being Assessment (DAWBA) is a novel package of questionnaires, interviews, and rating techniques designed to generate ICD-10 and DSM-IV psychiatric diagnoses on 5-16-year-olds. Nonclinical interviewers administer a structured interview to parents about psychiatric symptoms and resultant impact. When definite symptoms are identified by the structured questions, interviewers use open-ended questions and supplementary prompts to get parents to describe the problems in their own words. These descriptions are transcribed verbatim by the interviewers but are not rated by them. A similar interview is administered to 11-16-year-olds. Teachers complete a brief questionnaire covering the main conduct, emotional, and hyperactivity symptoms and any resultant impairment. The different sorts of information are brought together by a computer program that also predicts likely diagnoses. These computer-generated summary sheets and diagnoses form a convenient starting point for experienced clinical raters, who decide whether to accept or overturn the computer diagnosis (or lack of diagnosis) in the light of their review of all the data, including transcripts. In the present study, the DAWBA was administered to community (N = 491) and clinic (N = 39) samples. There was excellent discrimination between community and clinic samples in rates of diagnosed disorder. Within the community sample, subjects with and without diagnosed disorders differed markedly in external characteristics and prognosis. In the clinic sample, there was substantial agreement between DAWBA and case note diagnoses, though the DAWBA diagnosed more comorbid disorders. The use of screening questions and skip rules greatly reduced interview length by allowing many sections to be omitted with very little loss of positive information. Overall, the DAWBA successfully combined the cheapness and simplicity of respondent-based measures with the clinical persuasiveness of investigator-based diagnoses. The DAWBA has considerable potential as an epidemiological measure, and may prove to be of clinical value too.
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            Can training in a real-time strategy video game attenuate cognitive decline in older adults?

            Declines in various cognitive abilities, particularly executive control functions, are observed in older adults. An important goal of cognitive training is to slow or reverse these age-related declines. However, opinion is divided in the literature regarding whether cognitive training can engender transfer to a variety of cognitive skills in older adults. In the current study, the authors trained older adults in a real-time strategy video game for 23.5 hr in an effort to improve their executive functions. A battery of cognitive tasks, including tasks of executive control and visuospatial skills, were assessed before, during, and after video-game training. The trainees improved significantly in the measures of game performance. They also improved significantly more than the control participants in executive control functions, such as task switching, working memory, visual short-term memory, and reasoning. Individual differences in changes in game performance were correlated with improvements in task switching. The study has implications for the enhancement of executive control processes of older adults. Copyright (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.
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              Action-video-game experience alters the spatial resolution of vision.

              Playing action video games enhances several different aspects of visual processing; however, the mechanisms underlying this improvement remain unclear. Here we show that playing action video games can alter fundamental characteristics of the visual system, such as the spatial resolution of visual processing across the visual field. To determine the spatial resolution of visual processing, we measured the smallest distance a distractor could be from a target without compromising target identification. This approach exploits the fact that visual processing is hindered as distractors are brought close to the target, a phenomenon known as crowding. Compared with nonplayers, action-video-game players could tolerate smaller target-distractor distances. Thus, the spatial resolution of visual processing is enhanced in this population. Critically, similar effects were observed in non-video-game players who were trained on an action video game; this result verifies a causative relationship between video-game play and augmented spatial resolution.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2014
                14 March 2014
                : 9
                : 3
                : e91506
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Ghent University, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Department of Experimental Psychology and Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Ghent, Belgium
                [2 ]Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité University Medicine, St Hedwig Krankenhaus, Campus Mitte, Berlin, Germany
                [3 ]Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), Berlin and Braunschweig, Germany
                [4 ]Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany
                [5 ]Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
                [6 ]Universitaetsklinikum Hamburg Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
                [7 ]Department of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany
                [8 ]Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
                [9 ]Department of Addictive Behaviour and Addiction Medicine, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany
                [10 ]Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, INSERM Unit 1000 “Imaging & Psychiatry,” University Paris Sud, Orsay, France
                [11 ]AP-HP Department of Adolescent Psychopathology and Medicine, Maison de Solenn, University Paris Descartes, Paris, France
                [12 ]Rotman Research Institute, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
                [13 ]Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
                [14 ]School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
                [15 ]Department of Genetic Epidemiology in Psychiatry, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany
                [16 ]Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany
                [17 ]Neuroimaging Center, Department of Psychology, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany
                [18 ]Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
                George Mason University/Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, United States of America
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: SK RL TB GB CB PC HF HG BI KM EL FN EA TP MR MS AS BW GS AH JG. Performed the experiments: EL FN. Analyzed the data: SK RL. Wrote the paper: SK RL TB GB CB PC HF HG BI KM EL FN EA TP MR MS AS BW GS AH JG.

                Article
                PONE-D-13-50589
                10.1371/journal.pone.0091506
                3954649
                24633348
                2b27a59e-b96d-4962-ad21-0065bb3c6446
                Copyright @ 2014

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 3 December 2013
                : 12 February 2014
                Page count
                Pages: 6
                Funding
                The IMAGEN study receives research funding from the European Community's Sixth Framework Program (LSHM-CT-2007-037286) and is supported by the UK Department of Health NIHR-Biomedical Research Centre ‘Mental Health’ and the MRC program grant “Developmental pathways into adolescents' substance abuse.” Project coordination: Gunter Schumann (Gunter.Schumann@iop.kcl.ac.uk), website: http://www.imagen-europe.com. Additional funding was provided by the Berliner Senatsverwaltung "Implikationen biopsychosozialer Grundlagen der Spielsucht für Prävention und Therapie" Vergabe-Nr. 002-2008/ I B 35 and BMBF 01 GQ 0914. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Neuroscience
                Cognitive Science
                Cognitive Psychology
                Psychology
                Applied Psychology
                Developmental Psychology
                Experimental Psychology
                Medicine and Health Sciences
                Diagnostic Medicine
                Diagnostic Radiology
                Magnetic Resonance Imaging
                Mental Health and Psychiatry
                Pediatrics
                Child Development
                Radiology and Imaging
                Social Sciences

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