Duke University researchers have found that the use of video games can help in training the brain to make faster and better use of visual outputs.
Scientists have revealed many positive as well as negative attributes linked to the use of video games. While gaming curbs the amount of physical activities one indulges in leading to obesity, Duke University researchers have found that video games can unconsciously train the brain to make faster and better use of visual outputs, according to a press release.
Greg Appelbaum, an assistant professor of psychiatry in the Duke School of Medicine and an author of the study reveals that gamers tend to see things differently and extract much more information than others from a visual scene. In a world where nearly all college students are avid video gamers, researchers were able to find 125 participants that included both non-gamers as well as intense video gamers.
The participants had to undergo a visual sensory test where eight letters in a circular arrangement appeared onscreen for one tenth of a second and then disappeared. After an interval of 13 milliseconds to 2.5 seconds, an arrow pointing to a spot where one of the letters appeared and participants were asked to answer which letter it was. It was found that irrespective of the time interval between the letters disappearing and the arrow appearing onscreen, participants that were intensive gamers outperformed the non-gamers.
Previous studies have established that video gamers are quicker at responding to visual stimuli and by playing certain games the response level gets faster with time, reveals Appelbaum. The brain usually sorts information according to what the eyes see and the information that is deemed useless by the brain is forgotten faster.
According to Appelbaum, the reason for this quick response to visual stimuli among gamers could be because gamers are better at making correct decisions from the information they have available.
The study appears in the June edition of the journal Attention, Perception and Psychophysics.
