Originally published October 13 2005
MRIs show that video games activate aggressive brain activities
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
René Weber, assistant professor of communication and telecommunication at Michigan State, led an MRI study of 13 male participants, who demonstrated neural patterns of activity linked to aggression while playing a violent video game.
Each participant's game play was recorded and content analyzed on a frame-by-frame basis.
"There is a causal link between playing the first-person shooting game in our experiment and brain-activity pattern that are considered as characteristic for aggressive cognitions and affects," said René Weber, assistant professor of communication and telecommunication at MSU and a researcher on the project.
"There is a neurological link and there is a short-term causal relationship.
"Violent video games frequently have been criticized for enhancing aggressive reactions such as aggressive cognitions, aggressive affects or aggressive behavior.
Weber conducted the research with his colleagues Klaus Mathiak of RWTH Aachen University (Germany) and Ute Ritterfeld of the University of Southern California.
FMRI is a technique for determining which parts of the brain are activated by different types of physical sensation or activity, such as sight, sound or the movement of a subject's fingers.
This "brain mapping" is achieved by setting up an advanced MRI scanner in a special way so that the increased blood flow to the activated areas of the brain shows up on functional MRI scans.
Participants played the mature-rated first-person-shooter game "Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror" for five rounds, 12 minutes per round (an average of 60 minutes total), while in an fMRI scanner.
Game-play recordings were content analyzed with a novel frame-by-frame method, which assessed whether virtual violence was involved at any moment during play.
The video game industry is a $10 billion dollar industry in the United States and more than 90 percent of all U.S. children and adolescents play video games, on average for about 30 minutes daily.
"Mature" rated games are extremely popular with pre-teen and teenage boys who report no trouble buying the games.
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