When video games mess with brains, something good happens, sometimes
SECOND OF TWO PARTS — Ever since some kid shunned fresh air for a game of Pong — one of the first home video games — back in 1975, scientists (and parents) have been debating the merits and malignancies of such play. And as the video game landscape has become richer, so has the research. But despite decades of study, scientists are still asking the 64 kilobyte question: Do video games boost brain power or damage it? The answer is simple: It’s complicated.
“One can no more say what the effects of video games are, than one can say what the effects of food are,” write brain scientists Daphne Bavelier and C. Shawn Green in a forum on brains and video games published in the December 2011 Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Just as Twinkies, blood sausage, spinach and apple pie all fall under the rubric of consumable substances, Tetris, Call of Duty, Civilization and Grand Theft Auto are just a handful of the thousands of video games that may (rot) (improve) the mind.