Intro 

Discussing the health of the brain from a knowledge standpoint is a taboo topic; Does gaming make a person more aware and motivated and does it change the thought processes of a brain entirely? This will be hard to prove completely, however, from a theory point of view, it is worth diving into.  

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Spatial Awareness 

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Firstly, I want to discuss the Work of a man called Vsauce, he is a youtuber that goes around answering questions, one of which happened to be about gaming and whether it improves or declines the brain, he found that games seems to stimulate the mind and cause an action/reward out comes, where the brain associated doing something with a reward, almost motivating the mind.  

The hippocampus is a part of the brain responsible for spatial and object memory, Michael (Vsauce) was asked by Dr. Dane and Dr. Craig to take a series of tests to test his hippocampus, one of the tests was a 3D simulation that tested his spatial awareness, testing his ability to find objects in very simple terrain, he played these repeatedly to make sure there was no bias in the test, from there, Michael was made to test his real world spatial awareness and memory using a 6ft white wall maze that he had to navigate and find objects that were placed in the same areas of the maze constantly, he was made to this without any real gaming beforehand as to see if there are any changes after he games for 10 days straight. Watching the video, I found that he was randomly running around the maze and using random chance to find the objects, he was timed during the session, then was asked to come back days later after playing games.  

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After 10 days of gaming, Michael was asked to re-sit the test with a slightly more difficult maze, a group of people did the test maze too but they didn’t have any gaming experience, this was to see whether Michael's spatial awareness was improved after gaming. When reviewing his results, he had improved and beaten the group that didn’t game and his old score on the easier maze, this hints at the idea that maybe gaming can train certain mental abilities such as spatial awareness. 

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Attention span 

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Humans are good at attention, we can find people in a crowd, watch a 2-hour long movie and listen to a story but what if I said that gamers may be able to do it slightly better in some ways. A cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier stepped onto a ted talks to discuss such an idea, using science she was able to share some of her thoughts and tests that she has conducted that could support gaming and some forms of mind improvement.  

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Her first idea was that gamers have a better form of focus than people that don’t play games. The myth that gaming makes your eyesight worse may not be a myth as she expresses an eye test that was conducted to see if this was true, the results came back better than people that don’t game but this might be luck, however, she explains that the improvements made were in two different ways, they could resolve small detail in a messy environment and strangely be more attentive to different levels of the color grey, this is a very thought provoking idea that something like ‘15 hours a week’ of gaming could make such unique but drastic improvement.  

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The most intriguing topic that Daphne covered was attention span and whether it is improved or declined, daphne argues for this due to the research she says she conducted. She demonstrates an attention test on the audience in the video, the test is a game that is familiar to most; the game shows different words such as ‘Red’ or ‘Blue or ‘Yellow’, however, the words are colored differently from their property, then daphne asks the audience to try and say the color they see and not read out the word its self, it’s a lot harder than it looks. After conducting this small game on the audience, she reveals that gamers learnt how to overcome the game quicker that those who don’t game, this gives a good notion towards gaming improving certain elements on the mind and gives some positive reinforcement towards such a big popularity of people that do game.  

Daphne enforces her hypothesis further, the 3 sections of the brain: The Parietal Lobe, Frontal lobe and the Anterior Cingulate, these three sections may be affected by gaming positively and are monitored by Daphne using brain imagery. She spread the idea that te main changes are in those 3 networks of the brain. The first one Parietal Lobe is for the direction of objects and the focal point, the Frontal lobe allows people to sustain their focus and attention on something or someone and the Anterior Cingulate is used for the location and the regulation on something, the Anterior Cingulate also aids in conflict resolution.  Daphne claims that these are more efficient after gaming. Daphne also suggests that an array of other mind improvements that are improved by gaming, such as Multi-tasking, multi-media tasking and multi-object monitoring.  

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Other changes 

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Daphne from Ted talks suggests that gamers have a better form of focus than people that don’t play games. The myth that gaming makes your eyesight worse may not be a myth as she expresses an eye test that was conducted to see if this was true, the results came back better than people that don’t game but this might be luck, however, she explains that the improvements made were in two different ways, they could resolve small detail in a messy environment and strangely be more attentive to different levels of the color grey, this is a very thought provoking idea that something like ‘15 hours a week’ of gaming could make such unique but drastic improvement. 

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Summary  

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After my research and gathering what I considered to be the most compelling data for my argument, I found a grey area that can be proven by science, this information suggests that gaming does a great deal for the mind in healthy doses, as daphne states ‘Binging is never good’, however, gaming seems to be effective for attention span and focus and perhaps eyesight. Vsauce considered the idea towards spatial awareness and how gaming can improve the brains ability to orientate you easier after gaming. I believe that gaming is healthy for the mind, I feel it improves focus and memory and even some other elements that may not have been fully addressed.