Video game players have improved decision-making abilities and enhanced brain activities

Video game playing is a popular activity which provides a cognitively engaging, sensory rich environment that can lead to cognitive benefits in those who play frequently. How exactly they change our brain to achieve these cognitive benefits has yet to be known. In a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, we examined the behavioral and brain responses of video game- players (VGP) and non-video game-players (NVGP) during decision-making tasks. In behavioral response, VGP were overall faster by approximately 190 ms and more accurate by 2% than NVGP. In brain response, comparing percent signal changes in commonly activated brain regions between groups, we found that video gamers had increased task-related signal changes in the right lingual gyrus, right supplementary motor area (SMA), and left thalamus associated with improved behavioral response. Directed functional network activities to the right SMA and the left thalamus were also increased. The regional signal changes and network activities of all participants were found to be negatively correlated with decision response time, indicating that higher the node and network activities better the performance. These results provide novel insights into the brain mechanisms that underlie improvements in sensorimotor decision-making abilities due to video game playing.