Call of Duty: Are Videogames our Friend or Foe?

Around the mid-1980s, video games began to rise as a form of popular entertainment, and within the last twenty years, they have catapulted even further through the development of mobile games for the casual gamer. From the fears of concerned parents as well as to better understand its effects on the brain, video games have been the subject of many neuroscientific studies. While many may be quick to state that “video games promote violence in children,” research shows that the issue is more complex than just a cause-and-effect scenario. 

Defining Video Game Study in Cognitive Science

Most video game studies have been focused on the “action” genre, traditionally defined as first- or third-person shooter games such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Core Design, 2001) and Team Fortress 2 (Valve Corporation, 2007). In this genre of video games, players navigate a three-dimensional space with the help of weaponry such as guns and knives. Collectively, these video games present a unique set of characteristics, useful for studying cognitive science: they force players to react under intense time pressure, distribute attention to be alert for threats in their digital environment, selectively focus on a target when required, and offer the ability to switch between these “monitoring” and “focusing” states, which are skills associated with attention and focus [1]. In a research review of 22 experimental studies of video games, over 50% of these studies used video games classified as “action” video games [2]. Other game types include puzzle games, role-playing games (RPGs), and racing games, but these were comparatively understudied due to their high variability in gameplay and lower popularity.

Within the 14 action games in the study, most studies opted to use Space Fortress or Super Mario [2]. Space Fortress was developed by the cognitive science department at the University of Illinois to study complex skill learning. The goal of the game is to shoot missiles at a “space fortress” while the players protect their own spacecraft [3]. Nintendo’s Super Mario, on the other hand, is classified as a 3D platformer, in which the player controls the titular character, Mario, running and jumping across platforms to get to a specific destination.

Cognitive Engagements

Playing a video game is a visual activity: after all, it is an interactive form of entertainment that primarily concerns sight and perception. A study by Blacker shows that playing action video games enhances visual working memory (VWM) by presenting players with constantly changing complex visual environments [4]. VWM is responsible for our ability to hold in visual information through a relevant amount of time, and is crucial to how we navigate the world with our eyes. For this study, the researchers trained a group of undergraduate students to play Call of Duty, a first-person shooter game (classified as an “action video game” by the researchers), while another group trained with a simulation game instead. After the video game training period, students performed several visual memory assessments that included identifying blocks in various colors and orders. Overall, students who trained with the action video game showed more improvement in identifying differences in visual stimuli, but had no significant difference from the other group for memorizing the order of stimuli. This concurs with previous research that VWM is indeed malleable, and video games could be one way used to improve short-term visual memory holding [4]. 

However, video games engage more than just the eye– they require players to make split-second decisions and get familiar with mechanics. To master these aspects, a video gamer must practice by playing video games continuously. A team in Germany investigated how video game training could improve probabilistic learning by studying participants while completing a learning task [5]. In its simplest form, probabilistic learning is a kind of conceptual learning, in which a person acquires the ability to conceptualize chances and eventually learn to choose the option that will reward them the most. Their learning task was a simple “weather report” task, which can be generalized to other instances of probabilistic learning, such as guessing and making predictions. The imaging technique that the team used, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), tracks neural activity through magnetic waves [6]. The imaging results showed significant activation clusters in brain locations associated with probabilistic learning, such as the thalamus and the left hippocampus [5]. Subsequent experimental tasks investigated whether probabilistic learning improves with playing video games. These experiments corroborated the effects of increased activity in these areas of the brain: participants who trained with video games scored significantly higher in a task that asked them to predict the weather based on a given card suit. The group also found that playing video games improved decision-making abilities. The team found that habitual gamers had more significant neural connections towards the thalamus than non-gamers, supporting the previous research that video game play can improve learning functions [5]. Another group performing a similar sutdy found habitual gamers generally performed better on a color-matching task compared to non-gamers, which required participants to guess the locations of colored dots based on previous experience [7]. However, unlike the previous study, there were no significant controls on the video games that the “gamers” played, with games ranging from first-person shooters to multiplayer battle arena games [7].

Playing certain video games has also been shown to change the gray matter composition and volume. Gray matter is a large aggregate of neurons on the outer layer of the brain that primarily functions to receive sensory information and translate those signals to interact with the world around us [8]. Gray matter serves as the backbone of cognition, and a low density of gray matter is a common risk factor for neurological disease later in life. A study on older adults investigated the effects of platformer video games on hippocampal gray matter for older adults as quantified by fMRI [9]. After an initial orientation of the Super Mario video game given by research assistants, participants trained with the video game, aiming to collect all stars in the levels over a six-month period. Comparing fMRI scans from before and after the experiment, the team found a general increase in gray matter volume in the cerebellum after the training period. The cerebellum is primarily involved in coordinating movements and balance of the body. Further, as demonstrated by the experiment, video games are similar to other movement-training regimes, and may have the ability to strengthen specific neural structures, such as movement and spatial learning, as in this case [9]. Another similar fMRI-based study used a handheld video game system instead of a television console to play Super Mario [10]. For this study, researchers found that there were not only increases in gray matter density in the cerebellum but also in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a section of the brain contributing to working memory and logical reasoning [10]. These results suggest that video games can strengthen neural connections in these areas of the brain, enabling growth and improvement in their functions.

Potential Risks of Video Game Play

Conversely, misuse of video games could negate all the neurological improvements and strengthening potential that it could have. The desire to play can affect the specific cognitive effects it could have on a person’s brain, suggesting that not everyone benefits from video game play in the same way [2]. Additionally, a study done by West and colleagues showed that playing action video games both increased and decreased the hippocampus size of their participants depending on the strategy employed by the players themselves [10]. Additional negative effects could arise from too much video game play or from the theme of the video game itself.

Too much of a good thing is often harmful, and video gameplay is no exception. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) used by healthcare professionals lists Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) in its contents and is classified as an excessive behavioral pattern, something similar to an addiction [11]. To be diagnosed with IGD, the use of video games must negatively affect normal life functioning, to the point of significant clinical distress when being unable to play video games or finding no enjoyment in any activity other than video games. However, the manual itself states that this disorder is understudied, making it difficult to establish consistent diagnostic criteria and assess the disorder’s prevalence [11]. 

Excessive play of video games is hypothesized to overstimulate the mesolimbic reward system. The mesolimbic system is a complex network of hormones and neurons that stimulate various parts of the brain, with the goal of mediating reward and pleasure. Psychologically, reward is when the brain associates certain stimuli with a certain outcome with continued reinforcement. Of all the complicated neurotransmitters involved in the reward system, dopamine is the one that plays the most important role [12]. A way to track dopamine is to use a positive emission tomography (PET) scan, a brain imaging method that uses a small drug known as a “tracer” to track the movement and distribution of energy molecules within the body [13]. Researchers in China used PET scans to discover that chronic internet gamers have dysregulated dopamine receptors, likely due to years of overuse [14]. The dopamine receptors in the group of chronic gamers were significantly lower and therefore allowed less glucose to enter parts of the brain associated with visual processing. This sort of dopamine dysregulation shares similarities to the pathways that drive other addictions, but further research is needed to determine the severity of addictive video game play and its neurological effects [14].

However, addiction is not the only negative impact of excessive video game usage. Specific to video games with violent elements, there is also the danger of social isolation and violent imagery desensitization. In a study of violent video games and brain activity, participants played either a violent first-person shooter or an exploration game [15]. Then, the participants paid attention to a series of images flashed across the same screen used to play the video games, all while having their brain activity monitored by EEG. After analysis, the results show that the participants who played the violent video game had a lowered limbic and temporal activity when presented with images of social inclusion, which could correlate to a lower desire for social experience and community. The authors indicate that this reduced psychological activity could lead to lowered satisfaction when engaging with positive social experiences, and could be an important factor when considering causes of socially-withdrawn behavior in a clinical setting [15]. Another study showed that exposure to violence in video games correlated with a lower empathetic response, which can be interchanged with the word desensitization [16]. For this study, participants played the first-person shooter game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which is rated 18+ due to “extreme violence.” Participants then looked at various images that depict hands in painful situations, such as a hand being slammed into a door, and rated how painful the image felt. Through EEG, the researchers could then monitor the empathy for pain response, associated with a specific wave in the EEG results. Ultimately, the researchers found that playing the violent video game did significantly decrease the wave’s signal, particularly for people who don’t normally play violent video games. It was much harder to discern the difference for participants who were habitual violent video game players, as their consistent play led to their lowered empathy response from the get-go, suggesting that habitual, consistent use of violent video games can decrease empathy for pain [16].

Harnessing Interactive Potential: Video Games as a Tool for Neuroscientific Study

Video games have not only been a subject of study but also a tool for other research. The power of video games lies within their interactive potential and this has been harnessed as a tool to investigate and treat certain neurological diseases.

A group of researchers at an Italian university used a video game training regime to help strengthen neural networks in children with developmental dyslexia (DD) [17]. DD is a neurological disease characterized by the impaired ability to spell and to read aloud, and commonly begins in childhood [18]. One theory of DD suggests that the issue is related to deficits in spatial attention networks, which could be strengthened using action video games. For the study, the team trained 14 children with DD in two sessions of a commercial action video game, and administered a reading test before, during, and after the two sessions [17]. Ultimately, the researchers found that playing the commercial action video game improved the phonological reading speed of the children, while a control group playing a non-action video game did not see any improvements in reading speed. However, both groups did not improve significantly in their comprehension speed. The children trained with an action video game also had significant improvements in reaction time and accuracy, suggesting that playing action video games help in spatial and attentional improvement in children with DD, such as getting through words faster, but do not help in improving their reading comprehension ability [17].

Another group of researchers in Taiwan utilized video games in their study of Parkinson’s disease [19]. Parkinson’s disease is a slow-progressing neurogenetic disorder more common in older adults, and is characterized by hesitation and stiffness in movement. In this study, the video game used is a system modified from the commercial Japanese video game system XaviX, which required full-body movement as participants stand on a “step pad” to match incoming signals from a TV screen mounted in front of them. Compared to a control group, participants who trained with the video game system had significantly improved (lower) scores in a standard assessment for the ability to balance and fall risk. However, a drawback of this study is that most of the participants only had mild to moderate Parkinson’s disease, meaning that a training regime like such would not be possible for patients with a severe form of the disease [19].

Video games have also been used to study other neurological issues such as strokes [20] and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [21]. These projects are only a small fraction of what researchers are using video games for, but they open up exciting new doors for the use of video games to improve cognitive abilities, especially with the mounting prevalence of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. However, further research is needed to understand how to properly mitigate potential risks.

Current Limitations

Video games are a rapidly evolving form of entertainment, so studying their cognitive effects on the brain needs to continue evolving as well. In video game research, genres and even the definition of what constitutes a video game are hardly unified. This leads to discrepancies in even the basis of what researchers are researching, which may prompt inconsistent results. The selection of video games used in research studies tends to be a small pool, so it can be argued that the results obtained for studies using Super Mario cannot be generalized to even other platformers, much less other games.

In terms of the industry itself, video game developers have been attempting to push the boundary of what constitutes a video game genre and bending its rules [22], such as combining and hybridizing genres, like the fitness role-playing game Ring Fit Adventure (Nintendo, 2019) or the platformer action game Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster, 2022). In addition, many video games have begun exploiting their interactive elements as an alternative method of storytelling, leading to the emergence of visual novels to the likes of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (Capcom, 2021), or story-driven role-playing games such as OMORI (Omocat, 2020), which are functionally different from other video games due to its extensive focus on storytelling rather than the “game” aspect of a video game. There has also been a push in video games with multiple gameplay styles within a basic framework, primarily through games with the form of an exploratory “open-world” concept such as Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games, 2017) and Genshin Impact (miHoYo, 2020). This choice in gameplay focus means that each player is getting a different experience, both in terms of enjoyment and effect on neurological function. 

Video games are a form of entertainment that could improve important cognitive processes such as visual memory, and have the potential to be a useful tool in neuroscientific research, but they also have the potential to be addictive and affect our emotional capacity for empathy and aggression. There exists an exciting new avenue for research in a form of entertainment that is only gaining more and more popularity. With a better understanding of the neuroscientific effects that video games can have on the brain, players and parents alike can make better-informed decisions on moderating video game play.

References

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