Your mom always told you video games would rot your brain, but recent research disagrees. Players of action video games (AVGs) in particular have been found to have enhanced attentional and sensorimotor function, exhibiting better visual selective attention, visuospatial attention, temporal processing using multiple senses, and hand-eye motor coordination on behavioral tasks. Meanwhile, other research has suggested that a part of the brain called the insular cortex (the cerebral cortex tucked into the Sylvian fissure) contains particular neural networks implicated in attentional and sensorimotor control. Is it possible that enhanced attention and sensorimotor function brought on by AVG playing could be associated with changes in the insular cortex? Diankun Gong and his team of researchers wanted to find out.
Pull apart the Sylvian (lateral) fissure to find the underlying insular cortex. Source: Netterimages.com.
Gong & co. invited about sixty AVG players in their early twenties to their neuroscience lab to have their brains scanned in an fMRI machine. Half of these gamers were considered experts; they had at least six years of experience with AVG playing and were either regional or national champions. The other half were amateurs who did not play AVGs habitually and had less than one year of experience. The researchers looked at the fMRI images of both groups’ brains and compared the appearances of their insular cortices.
What the researchers found will make gamers very happy: the AVG experts actually had more brain cells in the insular cortex as well as better connectivity between the anterior (front) insular cortex, implicated in attention, and posterior (back) insular cortex, implicated in sensorimotor function.
The increased connectivity between the attentional and sensorimotor networks of the insular cortex may suggest enhanced integration of these neural networks, which may serve as the biological basis of enhanced coordination between attention and sensorimotor function in expert AVG players.
Furthermore, the finding that brain cell density increased in the insular cortex is actually not a surprise when you look at other studies of learning; the more experience someone has with a particular task, the higher the brain cell density in the brain regions that are recruited during that task.
Insular enhancement may be good for other things besides tearing it up at League of Legends; insular enhancement is associated with language learning, musical learning, and better stroke recovery. So, if you’re a hardcore action video gamer, take advantage of your enhanced insular cortex and learn some Mandarin!
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