Neural Basis of Video Gaming: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: Video gaming is an increasingly popular activity in contemporary society, especially among young people, and video games are increasing in popularity not only as a research tool but also as a field of study. Many studies have focused on the neural and behavioral effects of video games, providing a great deal of video game derived brain correlates in recent decades. There is a great amount of information, obtained through a myriad of methods, providing neural correlates of video games.Objectives: We aim to understand the relationship between the use of video games and their neural correlates, taking into account the whole variety of cognitive factors that they encompass.Methods: A systematic review was conducted using standardized search operators that included the presence of video games and neuro-imaging techniques or references to structural or functional brain changes. Separate categories were made for studies featuring Internet Gaming Disorder and studies focused on the violent content of video games.Results: A total of 116 articles were considered for the final selection. One hundred provided functional data and 22 measured structural brain changes. One-third of the studies covered video game addiction, and 14% focused on video game related violence.Conclusions: Despite the innate heterogeneity of the field of study, it has been possible to establish a series of links between the neural and cognitive aspects, particularly regarding attention, cognitive control, visuospatial skills, cognitive workload, and reward processing. However, many aspects could be improved. The lack of standardization in the different aspects of video game related research, such as the participants' characteristics, the features of each video game genre and the diverse study goals could contribute to discrepancies in many related studies.

A new human delayed‐matching‐to‐place test in a virtual environment reverse‐translated from the rodent watermaze paradigm: Characterization of performance measures and sex differences

“…Our study was not designed to address any of these factors; however, prompted by our participant demographics, which indicated that male participants were substantially more likely to regularly play computer games than female participants, we assessed if there was a relation between participants' report of regular computer gaming and virtual DMP and mental rotation performance. Previous studies have linked computer gaming to better performance on a number of cognitive tests, including the mental rotation test (Boot, Kramer, Simons, Fabiani, & Gratton, ; Palaus, Marron, Viejo‐Sobera, & Redolar‐Ripoll, ; Terlecki & Newcombe, ), to an increase in hippocampal grey matter, and a shift from egocentric to allocentric navigation strategies (Kühn, Gleich, Lorenz, Lindenberger, & Gallinat, ). Consistent with these findings, our additional analyses suggest a positive relationship between gaming experience and some aspects of mental rotation and virtual DMP performance, which may reflect that gaming improves performance or that the cognitive abilities that improve mental rotation and virtual DMP performance make it more likely to engage in regular computer gaming (Boot et al, ).…”

Real‐time monitoring prefrontal activities during online video game playing by functional near‐infrared spectroscopy

“…However, there are also many previous studies reporting DLPFC deactivations during virtual reality visuo‐motor tasks and active video game playing . The deactivation of DLPFC appeared to be modulated by the genre of the game, but not the age or the performance level of the player . Flow experience during video game playing, but not passive viewing of video game contents , was associated with DLPFC deactivations .…”

“…The reasons why DLPFC could become deactivated during virtual reality visuo‐motor tasks/video game playing are still poorly understood, and remain a subject of debate . It has been proposed that lateral PFC could be activated in common during rest, and the recruitment of lateral PFC during rest supports higher cognitive functions that would occur in specific tasks, such as visual imaginary and memory retrieval .…”

Introducing COSMOS: a Web Platform for Multimodal Game-Based Psychological Assessment Geared Towards Open Science Practice

“…Finally, the novel assessment tools should provide investigators in the psychological and biomedical sciences with research-grade cognitive and psychological metrics. Technological advances along with a strongly grown computer literacy in the general population and widespread familiarity with computer games (Granello and Wheaton 2004;Palaus et al 2017) open up a plethora of possibilities for the operationalization of psychological research questions. Leveraging gamification to repeatedly obtain behavioral samples paves the way for a next-generation highthroughput psychometric toolset.…”