In a learning test, people who play video games performed amend than those who don't, and their brains appeared to be more active in regions linked to learning and memory.

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People who play video games regularly have more than active learning- and memory-related brain regions than those who don't.

So concludes a report from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany that was published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research.

The researchers explain that recent studies have suggested that playing video games may benefit cognition. However, the brain mechanisms involved are poorly understood.

They focused on "a widely unexplored area in gaming research" called "probabilistic category learning." This type of learning concerns acquiring and classifying knowledge and using it to predict future events.

A traditional manner of testing probabilistic category learning is the so-called weather prediction task, which researchers use to gain "insight into implicit forms of learning, cognitive flexibility, and the utilize of feedback signals in the brain."

For their investigation, the team recruited 17 video gamers and 17 non-gamers. They recruited the video gamers on the basis that they spent at least 15 hours per week playing action-based video games. The non-gamers either did non play at all or did so only infrequently.

Both groups played the conditions prediction task. As they completed it, the researchers used MRI to record their brain action.

To consummate the task, the participants had to await at three cue cards with different patterns on them and and then predict the conditions. They were asked, "Will at that place exist sun or rain?" They were then told straight away whether their answer was correct or wrong.

Every bit each menu is simply a partially authentic predictor of the atmospheric condition, the correct answer is adamant past the probability predicted by the combination.

For example, a combination of cue cards might comprise: a card whose pattern ways a 20 percent take chances of rain and fourscore percentage chance of sun; a 2nd card that means 80 pct chance of rain and 20 percentage gamble of sun; and a third that ways 60 percentage chance of rain and 40 percent take a chance of sun. The result of this combination would be rain.

The subjects performed the task again and again, with unlike combinations of cue cards. Thus, by receiving feedback, they learned which carte du jour combinations were related to which conditions condition.

Subsequently they finished the task, the participants completed a questionnaire that tested how much knowledge they had retained about the cue bill of fare combinations.

The researchers found that the video gamers performed much better at predicting conditions outcomes from cue carte combinations than the non-gamers.

Fifty-fifty though some of the cue menu combinations had a high uncertainty, the gamers still out-performed the not-gamers.

When the researchers analyzed the participants' questionnaire responses, they plant that the video gamers had retained more factual knowledge about the cue carte du jour combinations and the associated weather condition outcomes.

Assay of the MRI scans revealed that both gamers and not-gamers showed the same level of activeness in brain areas that are linked to "attention and executive office" and certain "memory-associated regions."

Nevertheless, the scans also showed notable brain differences between gamers and non-gamers. For case, the gamers showed stronger activeness in the hippocampus and other brain areas that are important for "semantic memory, visual imagery, and cognitive control."

"Nosotros think that playing video games trains certain brain regions like the hippocampus," says first study author Sabrina Schenk.

The study's findings are likely to be meaning not only for immature people, but as well for older generations, because reduction in memory is linked to changes in the hippocampus.

"Possibly we tin can treat that with video games in the future," suggests Schenk.

"Our study shows that gamers are better in analyzing a state of affairs quickly, to generate new noesis and to categorize facts – especially in situations with high uncertainties."

Sabrina Schenk