Playing Super Mario induces structural brain plasticity: gray matter changes resulting from training with a commercial video game

Abstract

Video gaming is a highly pervasive activity, providing a multitude of complex cognitive and motor demands. Gaming can be seen as an intense training of several skills. Associated cerebral structural plasticity induced has not been investigated so far. Comparing a control with a video gaming training group that was trained for 2 months for at least 30 min per day with a platformer game, we found significant gray matter (GM) increase in right hippocampal formation (HC), right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and bilateral cerebellum in the training group. The HC increase correlated with changes from egocentric to allocentric navigation strategy. GM increases in HC and DLPFC correlated with participants' desire for video gaming, evidence suggesting a predictive role of desire in volume change. Video game training augments GM in brain areas crucial for spatial navigation, strategic planning, working memory and motor performance going along with evidence for behavioral changes of navigation strategy. The presented video game training could therefore be used to counteract known risk factors for mental disease such as smaller hippocampus and prefrontal cortex volume in, for example, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia and neurodegenerative disease.

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“…There were no significant correlations between the two measures of reasoning nor with the perception of emotions, which at first seemed to contradict previous studies on cognitive development related to playing frequency (Feng et al, 2007;Kühn et al, 2014;McDermott et al, 2014;Suziedelyte, 2015). However, by examining the correlations with the preference for reasoning games, these have proved to be significant.…”

“…Research shows that certain types of video games are related to better spatial reasoning (Feng, Spence & Pratt, 2007), faster processing speed, and higher short-term visual memory (McDermott, Bavelier & Green, 2014), higher abstract reasoning, and problem-solving (Suziedelyte, 2015), among others. Literature suggests that video games can train neurological development, as in the research conducted by Kühn, Gleich, Lorenz, Lindenberger, & Gallinat (2014). The authors compared two groups: a control group with one that trained for two months in a platform game, and the results indicate a significant increase of brain matter in areas responsible for spatial location, planning, working memory, and motor performance.…”

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“…For example, it has been found that taxi drivers' brains have developed in the area of navigation ability [84] and musicians' brains develop differently [85]. Very recently it has been noticed that playing games, for example Super Mario, changes the players' brains as well [86]. It has been suggested that gaming or gamers (due to the differences in their brains) could be used to solve problems of the modern world.…”

Can Digital Games Be a Way of Improving the Neuroplasticity in Stroke Damage? Can the Adult Brain Grow New Cells or Rewire Itself in Response to a New Experience?

“…Researchers at the Max Planck Institute conducted the research on the effect of video games on the human brain and realized that it had been no change in the brains of some participating volunteers through the MRI technique [48].…”