Most people cringe at the results from the first ever study investigating the fundamental structure of the brain and video games. But they have probably never read the brilliant work of Dr. James Paul Gee, Professor at Arizona State University and video game advocate.

In the study, researchers at the Charité University Clinic in Berlin, Germany analyzed MRI scans of 154 14-year olds from the IMAGEN project. The teenage participants were divided into two groups based on a median of 9 hours weekly spent playing video games. It was found that the brains from the group of frequent gamers have greater left striatal gray matter volume compared with the brains from the moderate group. This part of the brain is the reward area, rich in the chemical dopamine, which makes us feel pleasure. Just as gamblers’ brains encourage them to continue placing bets when they are losing, the brain scans showed that the frequent video game players produced even more dopamine when they were losing.

James Paul Gee is a professor of Literacy Studies and author of the book, “What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy”. His interest in video games began when his son was playing the game Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It’s Dark Outside. Gee was interested in the game’s ability to hold his son’s attention. Despite video games being difficult, long and complex, Gee saw that young people really enjoyed them. As an educator, Gee wanted to translate this phenomenon to learning in schools.

Gee holds a strong belief that good video games incorporate good learning principles. This leads to deep learning, something all humans genuinely enjoy. On his blog, Gee argues that deep learning is “as attractive and addicting as real drugs and sex”. In order for deep learning to occur an extended commitment is necessary. This commitment from gamers is captured by enabling them to inherit or build an appealing character and through this character commit to the new virtual world.

Risk Taking is another of Gee’s good learning principles incorporated by good video games. Good video games effectively lower the consequences of failure, so that players are encouraged to take risks and try out new things. A player’s initial failures lead to new ways of finding success. This learning principle is closely related to the results from the Charité’s research. The fact that frequent gamers produced even more dopamine when they were losing, demonstrates the effectiveness of the games’ learning principles by retaining the players’ commitment to and motivation for succeeding in the video games.

A second major finding from the study, which has yet to be published, shows that the areas in the frontal cortex of the frequent gamers were noticeably larger than that of the moderate gamers. The areas of the frontal cortex are responsible for strategic planning, attention and working memory. This finding has only been covered by the German Media due to a German interview with one of the researchers. Idealo News reported it in English.

This most recent finding seems to further support James Paul Gee’s belief that video games incorporate good learning principles. The evidence of video games causing structural changes in the brain that simultaneously increase a player’s desire to participate and strengthen the player’s ability to think critically is significant to Gee’s cause. Hopefully, the days of labeling gamers as unproductive and anti-social zombies will soon be behind us.

Author:

Travis Shirk lives in Berlin, Germany and is a writer for the Idealo News Blog. He holds a Masters of Arts in Information and Library Science and is passionate about the topic of video games and literacy.