Think Smart: A Neuroscientist's Prescription for Improving Your Brain's Performance (18 page)

While no one has convincingly demonstrated that video-game playing can prevent or even delay the onset of dementia, there is general agreement that short-term memory and speed of response times are enhanced among video gamers. This decrease in reaction time is especially intriguing and raises an interesting and so far unanswered question: Does IQ increase in tandem with reaction time improvements?

Since many tests of intelligence emphasize faster processing speed, IQ strongly correlates with performance, at least on these tests. In general, people who are quickest on reaction-time tests tend to have above-average IQs. But other factors may also influence reaction time: some people are too cautious, lack self-confidence, or become easily distracted. Nonetheless, even though the correlation between speed of processing and IQ isn’t completely proven, playing video games will increase your ability to make speedier choices, whatever their effect on your IQ.

“The results from these studies suggest that video game experience could be a powerful tool in slowing, stopping, or even reversing the age-related declines in perceptual, motor, and cognitive capabilities that regularly occur in the elderly population,” according to Shawn Greene.

Obviously, video games aren’t the only source of cognitive enhancement in the mature brain. Similar benefits in combating age-related decline can be gained from other cognitively challenging pursuits such as bridge, chess, and puzzles. None of these can be counted on, however, to increase processing speed. Video games are unique in this regard.

Do I have any caveats about taking up video games? Just two:

First, some preliminary evidence indicates that video games can be habit-forming, even addictive. This is especially true for those games that allow for high-intensity
immersion,
the tendency for players to become totally absorbed in the video game: skipping meals, staying home from work, ducking family obligations. Especially worrisome is what has come to be called
situated immersion,
not just playing the game, but actually experiencing the illusion of existing within the game world. Situated immersion increases as video games advance in the intensity, vividness, and quality of the video graphics; the level of control the player can achieve within the game; and the extent to which the game offers an intriguing alternative to everyday life. All three of these elements are currently increasing at a blistering pace with the newest games providing near total immersion. This may be especially perilous for people who experience anxiety around other people—sufferers from so-called social phobia.

“Games offer virtual worlds that are often more exciting and beautiful than real life,” says psychotherapist Shauvan Scott. “We can achieve a sense of power and success that we may not be able to achieve in real life.” Scott, a former “compulsive gamer,” warns that “the dependency on video games can be debilitating.”

To avoid the perils of immersion, limit the amount of time you spend playing video games to no more than two to three hours per week. Also limit single sessions to an hour maximum. If you spend more time video-gaming, you increase your chances of inducing some of the symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, especially such hyperactivity symptoms as a subjective feeling of restlessness accompanied by a need to be “on the go.” This is more likely to occur with some of the more frenetic games.

What effect will video games have on attention? The prevailing opinion among the experts I polled doesn’t suggest that video games worsen a player’s attentional powers—the games enhance concentration and focus, at least while playing the video game. To monitor your own power of sustained attention, try a variation of what I call “the Henry James test.” After a video-game session, “power down” by reading a chapter of
Portrait of a Lady
or
The Golden Bowl.
If you find yourself feeling restless and jumping ahead in the story in anticipation of James “getting to the point,” you’ve spent too much time on the video game.

The second caveat (a more controversial one): Avoid games like Manhunt, Grand Theft Auto, and Take-Two, which feature gratuitous violence. Avoid as well games based on actual large-scale rampages or massacres such as Columbine or Virginia Tech. Although it’s difficult to prove that such video games “cause” people to act violently in real life, the evidence is pretty good that they can engender unhealthy mental states and, in some people, antisocial personality trends. Certainly they can create anxiety and other uncomfortable emotional states in many players (speaking from my observations and discussions with other players as well as my personal experience). Why does this occur? What is the mechanism within the brain that explains it?

Part of the explanation has to do with the realism of the display. For instance, watching a video that displays realistic human hands in a realistic environment activates the motor areas in the viewer’s brain. Geometrical or cartoon versions of the hands don’t. The depiction of movement is also important. “Even when the superficial resemblance to a human is slight (aliens), if the agent moves like a human, it is more likely to be interpreted as being humanlike,” writes India Morrison, an expert on video-game players’ empathy with video-game characters. This selective response pattern is likely related to activation of the brain’s
mirror neurons,
located in the frontal areas of the brain.

Mirror neurons first came to attention only a few years ago based on findings in macaque monkeys. Researchers observed that a cluster of cells in the prefrontal cortex of the monkeys fired both when a monkey grasped a peanut and when it watched another monkey grasp it. Only the sight of another monkey performing the action of grasping activated the mirror neurons. Watching a robot or mechanical device grasp the peanut failed to activate the mirror neurons.

Similar mirror neuron activations occur in our own brains when we watch the actions of another person. Some of these activations are highly individualized and based on life experiences that have sculpted the brain in specific ways. Pianists, for instance, show mirror neuron activation while watching someone play the piano; no activation occurs in the brain of someone lacking piano training.

When it comes to everyday experiences, mirror neuron activation patterns are similar from one person to another. Watching someone eat or drink, for instance, activates similar neurons in the observer that would be activated if she was actually eating or drinking. At the most basic level, mirror neurons provide the mechanism by which one person identifies with another.

Does such identification with another person extend to video characters too? Good reasons exist for believing that it does. In real life, emotional as well as motor behavior tends to be “mirrored” during our social interactions with other people. This helps explain why most of us tend to avoid people who consistently express negative or distressing emotions; after a few minutes in their company we begin to feel similar negative emotions ourselves on the basis of our brain’s reading (at an unconscious level) of their facial expressions, tone of voice, and bodily movements. Psychologists refer to this process as
visuoaffective mapping.
Facial expressions denoting disgust, pain, or fear are especially effective in arousing similar emotional states in us when we observe those facial expressions. Both the facial expression and the accompanying emotions are mirrored and unconsciously we adopt them.

A similar situation exists in the world of video games such as Second Life, where avatars (three-dimensional-looking models serving as players’ self-representations in an Internet world) have become more lifelike over the past decade, thanks to advances in computer graphics. Skin, hair, and fabric are now rendered in near-perfect verisimilitude. But even more important advances have taken place in the rendering of an avatar’s social expressions: facial configuration, eye-gaze direction, gait. As a result, users are now more likely to infer character traits from an avatar’s behavior and appearance.

With further refinements, this attribution of human emotions to video simulations is likely to increase. “It is quite conceivable that in a few years avatars will be available whose behavior is nearly imperceptible from humans,” writes Judith Donath of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.

A correlation between video games and emotional experience is of special concern because, as Mike Musgrove of
The Washington Post
puts it, “consumer electronics makers looking to tap into the growing computer and video game market are seeking new and novel ways to help players feel as if they’re inside their favorite virtual world.” (A good reason to consider carefully what kind of virtual world you want to be in.)

But despite their potential for mischief, I believe video games have a lot to offer. As new and more sophisticated games come on the market, additional brain enhancement capabilities will become widely available. “The surge in new video games being developed to enhance one particular trait or another is probably the best testimony of the level of excitement in this field,” says Shawn Greene. “Video-game research is opening a fascinating window into the amazing capability of the brain and behavior to be reshaped by experience.”

In summary, if you take up video-gaming, even casually, you can expect the following benefits: decreased overall reaction times, increased eye-hand coordination, and enhanced manual dexterity. You’ll improve your spatial visualization skills and your ability to mentally work in three dimensions. Finally, you’ll be better able to divide and rapidly switch your attention as well as increase the number of things that you can visually attend to simultaneously.

Internet-based “Brain Gyms” are another increasingly popular technological approach to brain enhancement. These computer-based programs serve as a kind of “Grandpa Einstein” that, it’s claimed, can make up and even reverse age-associated declines in memory and mental fitness in general. So far, though, the value of these programs hasn’t been established, since a really solid study, such as the Bavelier and Greene studies on the cognitive benefits of action-video games, hasn’t been carried out. Such an evaluation is hampered by the wide variations among the different programs: some of them feature listening exercises, while others take a more visual approach; some involve a good deal of physical activity, while others require nothing more than moving a computer mouse. Nonetheless, one company, the producer of MindFit, claims on the basis of an internal comparison study that regular use of its product leads to greater gains in short-term memory and attention than those occurring among players of video games.

Having personally tried several of the Brain Gym programs, I think that action-video games are more likely to lead to brain enhancement. For one thing, video games are more entertaining than the repetitive “mental workouts” provided by the various brain fitness programs. Tracking balls around the computer screen doesn’t begin to capture one’s interest as successfully as playing one of the more sophisticated action games. The situation is like comparing a workout on the treadmill at the gym to running the same distance along a beach.

Brain Gyms may improve substantially in the future, especially if they incorporate some of the features of action-video games. But at the moment, the best way of deciding if a Brain Gym approach is for you is to personally try out one of the programs. I suggest starting with a free one or one that offers a limited-time free trial offer. After a few sessions, switch to an action-video game and compare the two experiences. I think you’ll find that memory and attention are more easily enhanced through a challenging video game than through the mental exercises found in Brain Gyms, which after a while become uncomfortably reminiscent of the classroom.

PART FIVE

Fashioning the Creative Brain

I
f you employ the methods suggested in the past chapters, you will notice improvements in your brain’s performance. Your general memory and working memory will be strengthened, your attention span increased, your spelling and vocabulary improved, and your visualization skills enhanced. Taken together, these improvements should lead to greater creativity.

As a prelude to discussing the brain and creativity, it’s helpful to say a few words about problem solving in general. Usually we solve a problem via a series of distinct steps. Consider the problem on page 172, “How many dots will be in the next figure in the sequence?” In order to answer that question, we first familiarize ourselves with the elements of the problem by reading and thinking about it. Our attempt to achieve a workable solution activates various and sundry brain circuits. For example, in this problem we notice that the first figure consists of twelve dots; the second figure twenty dots; and the third figure twenty-eight dots. In the progress from figure one to figure three, each figure is increased by eight dots, suggesting that the fourth figure might have thirty-six dots. That seems too easy—there must be a trick here, but what is it?