Nowadays, people spend a collective three billion hours per week playing video games worldwide. Video gaming has become more and more pervasive across the lifespan as well as across cultures. 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. 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. GM increases in HC and DLPFC correlated with participants’ desire for video gaming, evidence suggesting a predictive role of desire in volume change. The HC increase correlated with changes from egocentric to allocentric navigation strategy. 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. Associated cerebral structural plasticity induced has not been investigated so far.
Gaming can be seen as an intense training of several skills. Video gaming is a highly pervasive activity, providing a multitude of complex cognitive and motor demands.
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