- LONDON (Reuters) - The brains
of players of violent video games react as if the violence were real, a
study has suggested.
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- Klaus Mathiak at the University of Aachen in Germany
studied the brain patterns of 13 men aged 18 to 26 who, on average, played
video games for two hours a day.
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- Wired up to a scanner, they were asked to play a game
involving navigating through a complicated bunker, killing attackers and
rescuing hostages.
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- Mathiak found that as violence became imminent, the cognitive
parts of the brain became active and that during a fight, emotional parts
of the brain were shut down.
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- The pattern was the same as that seen in subjects who
have had brain scans during other simulated violent situations.
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- It suggests that video games are a "training for
the brain to react with this pattern," Mathiak says.
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- The research was presented at a meeting in Canada and
reported by New Scientist magazine.
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- Whether violent videos make people more aggressive though
is hard to prove, the magazine noted. Studies have suggested players of
violent games are in fact more aggressive but have left open the question
of whether the games made them that way.
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- http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050622/tc_nm/science_videos_dc_2
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