Shafaqna English- Six months of playing a fast-paced action video game may improve visual attention and alter patterns of brain activity, according to a small study published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology. Researchers found changes in both local brain-wave activity and communication between brain regions, with some of these changes predicting improvements in attention, according to PsyPost.
The study, led by Jihan Wang of the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, followed 43 university students with little or no previous gaming experience. Participants played Counter-Strike: Global Offensive for about one hour a day, five days a week, accumulating roughly 120 hours over six months.
Researchers assessed the participants at the start of the study, after three months and at the six-month mark. Tests measured two forms of visual attention: selective attention, or the ability to focus on relevant information while ignoring distractions, and distributed attention, which involves monitoring multiple areas of the visual field simultaneously.
Reaction times improved over the six-month period. Selective attention improved steadily throughout the study, while distributed attention showed a marked improvement during the first three months and continued to improve by the end.
The researchers also used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure resting brain activity. They found a gradual reduction in alpha-wave activity, particularly in the parietal and occipital regions. Lower resting alpha activity is generally associated with greater brain readiness and reduced suppression of visual information. Participants showing larger reductions in alpha activity also tended to demonstrate greater improvements in selective attention.
The study also identified increasing synchronization between widely separated brain regions. By six months, connectivity had become particularly pronounced between the frontal, parietal and occipital lobes. Measures of overall network efficiency and clustering also increased, suggesting a more integrated pattern of communication across the brain.
However, the researchers cautioned that the network changes themselves showed only weak associations with improvements in behavioral performance and were not statistically significant after adjustments for multiple comparisons.
Statistical models nevertheless found that both local alpha-wave changes and whole-brain network characteristics could predict individual improvements in reaction times. This suggests that changes in resting brain activity may provide clues about how cognitive performance responds to prolonged action-game training.
The findings should be interpreted cautiously. The study had only 43 participants and lacked an inactive control group, making it impossible to establish that gaming itself caused the observed changes. Practice effects, maturation and changes in participants’ daily routines or stress levels may also have contributed.
The researchers also measured only resting brain activity, leaving unanswered how the altered networks function during active, demanding cognitive tasks. Further controlled studies will be needed to determine whether long-term action gaming directly produces the observed neural and attentional benefits.
Source: PsyPost