New research shows that playing games increases your cognitive abilities

While many themes revolve around games that can lead to violent behavior, a new study has shown that games actually have many benefits.

With the recent resounding success of Fortnite, the controversy surrounding whether video games are harmful or beneficial is more important than ever. While many themes revolve around games that can lead to violent behavior, a new study has shown that games do indeed help. Research shows that the game actually increases the gray matter in the player’s brain. In other words, games can promote faster and smarter thought processing.

The study, released by Nature, was conducted on a group of two people: ‘gaming experts’ and ‘casual gamers’. Gaming professionals are people who attend regional and national tournaments of League of Legends or Dota 2, while ‘casual gamers’ don’t play or compete well. Both groups consisted of about 30 people.

The research team focused on a specific part of the brain, the occipital lobe. The vast majority of a person’s language processing is believed to take place in the occipital lobe, as well as other processes such as taste, smell, empathy, altruism, and human experience. The occipital lobe images of the ‘game experts’ had more gray matter and more connectivity in the inner regions. Gray matter controls nearly all brain functions, so increasing gray matter and connectivity indicates that pro players have higher IQs and faster thought processing.

While the WHO believes that gaming addiction is a psychological disorder, this does not seem to be the case. To be diagnosed with a disorder, the patient needs to show a desire for the game to the point where he’ll show signs of addiction when he’s not playing the game. Also, the term ‘excessive’ (excessive gaming) is rather vague, and this study shows that people who play games more than others have faster and smarter thought processing.

While playing games a lot is considered a good way to increase gray matter, we should keep in mind that this is not the only way. Activities such as sports and painting have also been shown to improve the gray matter of active people, and they may be an alternative for those with game addiction.

Source: BusinessInsider