Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 5, 2025

13:40
Combining Computer Game-Based Behavioural Experiments With High-Density EEG and Infrared Gaze Tracking
Published on: December 16, 2010
16.7K
The light side of gaming: creativity and brain plasticity
Christiane Ganter-Argast1,2, Marc Schipper3,4, Manouchehr Shamsrizi5,6
1Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
|January 22, 2024
Summary
Gaming may boost brain plasticity and executive functions (EFs) by fostering creativity. Further research into games as creative therapy offers potential for improved health, wellbeing, and reduced cognitive impairments.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Therapeutic Interventions
Background:
- The intersection of gaming, brain plasticity, and executive functions (EFs) remains an area ripe for exploration.
- Neuroscience research highlights the potential for games to influence cognitive processes and mental wellbeing.
- Creativity is increasingly recognized for its role in cognitive health and therapeutic outcomes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the potential of gaming to enhance brain plasticity and executive functions (EFs) through creativity.
- To review the current literature linking games, creativity, brain plasticity, and EFs.
- To emphasize the neuroscientific basis for using games in creative therapy for health and wellbeing.
Main Methods:
- Literature review of studies on gaming, creativity, brain plasticity, and executive functions.
- Analysis of the neuroscientific underpinnings of game-based cognitive enhancement.
- Synthesis of research findings to identify therapeutic applications.
Main Results:
- Games show potential to foster creativity, which may enhance brain plasticity and executive functions (EFs).
- Gaming can serve as a therapeutic tool by engaging imagination and cognitive processes.
- Evidence suggests games can help mitigate cognitive impairments and improve overall wellbeing.
Conclusions:
- Investigating games as a therapeutic tool for creativity holds significant promise for mental health.
- Enhancing brain plasticity and EFs through gaming may offer novel approaches to cognitive rehabilitation.
- This research opens avenues for utilizing games to improve health, wellbeing, and manage conditions like anxiety.
Related Concept Videos
Neuroplasticity
363
Neuroplasticity reflects the brain's remarkable capacity to adapt and evolve, responding dynamically to learning, experiences, or injury by reorganizing its neural circuitry. This reorganization involves creating new neural connections and refining old ones through a series of biological processes that contribute to the brain's lifelong development and adaptability.
363
Social Scripts
9.4K
People tend to know what behavior is expected of them in specific, familiar settings. A script is a person’s knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting (Schank & Abelson, 1977). Essentially, scripts are a particular kind of schema, one containing default values for the features within an event. In the restaurant example, the script's features include the props (e.g., tables, menu, food, and money), the roles to be played (e.g., customer and waiter),...
9.4K
Cognitive Learning
243
Cognitive learning is based on purposive behavior, incidental learning, and insight learning.
E. C. Tolman's theory of purposive behavior emphasizes that much behavior is goal-directed. He argued that to understand behavior, we must look at the entire sequence of actions leading to a goal. For instance, high school students study hard, not just due to past reinforcement but also to achieve the goal of getting into a good college.
Tolman introduced the idea that behavior is influenced by...
E. C. Tolman's theory of purposive behavior emphasizes that much behavior is goal-directed. He argued that to understand behavior, we must look at the entire sequence of actions leading to a goal. For instance, high school students study hard, not just due to past reinforcement but also to achieve the goal of getting into a good college.
Tolman introduced the idea that behavior is influenced by...
243

