14 DAY TRIAL // We know this is not the kind of news you'd like to hear, especially now, during the holidays, but that is what Doctor Chou Yuan-hua, from the department of Psychiatry of Taipei Veterans General Hospital claims to happen if you play video games. Actually, he says that gamers risk to damage their brain functions and affect their learning and emotional control, especially when they are playing violent video games.
Now this kind of information is not something I have to take for granted, since there are different ways people try to act against violence in video games and things like that, but without having solid proof. If the doctor's declaration would have been made without that "violent games" part, I might have believed more of it. But one may never be certain about some things.
According to Doctor Chou Yuan-hua, 30 people aged 25 were monitored before and after playing a video game for 30 minutes. And the blood circulation in the brain was different before and after: the Taiwanese doctor noticed an obvious decrease in blood flow in the frontal lobe of the brain, as well as the anterior cingulate gyrus. This effect seems to be more pronounced in those cases where violent video games are played. Of course!
Now, if you wonder what does "decrease in blood flow" really means, the doctor had it covered. So he explained that the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex, located at the front of the brain, is associated with thinking, speaking, decision-making and impulse control, while the anterior cingulate gyrus, located in the medial wall of the frontal lobe, modulates internal emotional responses. Crystal clear, right?
Translated again, it means that gamers risk damaging their brain functions and affect their learning and emotional control. For instance, Doctor Chou said that it has been proven that patients with schizophrenia or depression have significantly lower blood flows in their frontal lobes and anterior cingulate gyruses. So things might look pretty serious, if everything is correct. There are still some thing left to know: what's the decrease people get after playing a video game, and how bad it is compared to normal blood flow. And, of course, if I should choose a rocket launcher or a plasma gun in the gaming session I'm about to start.