August 23, 2017.
According to a study conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Montreal in Quebec, certain video games affect cognitive functions. Explanations.
Watch out for war games
Certain war games, in particular the ” first-person shooter »(First person shooters) like Counter strike, Call of Duty Where Battlefield, would be bad for the brain. This is what a study published in the scientific journal reveals Molecular Psychiatry. According to this work, over-playing these games could lead to atrophy of certain areas of the brain.
The hippocampus, an area of the brain responsible for memory and location in space, would be affected in particular. According to the authors of this study, in the long term, these games could even lead to development of serious mental pathologies such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress syndrome or depression. An observation that risks pushing some parents to prohibit these games from their children.
The hippocampus is not stimulated enough
Quebec researchers have indeed found that large players have less gray matter in their hippocampus. ” It is proven that video games are beneficial for certain cognitive systems, mainly those related to visual attention and short-term memory », Said Gregory West, who led the work. But some studies ” also show that there might be a cost to this “, he added.
And this cost would be verified over time. This would be due to the fact that when playing a war game, we tend more to use a region of the brain called the striatum which allows us to acquire good reflexes, which is called the “ automatic motor skills “. The hippocampus being less stimulated, it would eventually atrophy. Will game makers take this conclusion into account? Nothing is less sure.
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Marine Rondot
