Your Brain On Video Games

I'm at work with this senior kid from Liberty High School.

Looking through their homework pile and found this cool article so I'm going to blog about it. It's from their AP Psychology class.

It's an article from Science Watch, "Your brain on video games" written by Sadie F. Dingfelder

The first paragraph reads, "Can't find your keys on a crowded coffee table? You may want to ask a dedicated video-game player for help...With thousands of hours of practice scanning a screen for enemy characters and useful objects, people who play games such as "Half-Life" are lightning fast at visual searches"

I need to show this to my mom who is above and beyond against me playing games. She's against everything I do. She has a hard time understanding why I am so different from my goody-to-shoe innocent sister who does nothing to upset my mom.

Video games have benefits! We are capable of keeping our eye at the center of the screen and the periphery at the same time. They tested 8 college students who has almost no experience playing video games (like my sister) and made them play counter strike (ftw) and Marvel vs Capcom for at least 3 days a week for 6 months and their focus and vision improved!

Yay for video games!

Along with this keen eye sight that we have, we also have lightning fast thumbs! They tested 20 video gamers and 20 non video gamers. When they saw a flash, they were to press a space button. Video gamers won by 20 milliseconds!

The author ends the paper by saying "I don't want to make it sound like video games are good for you. Learning a second language and playing a musical instrument can lead to benefits too. There are many ways to train your brain."

lol.

Playing guitar hero with a foreign boyfriend would be killing two birds with one stone then, huh?