Video gaming might improve mental focus

Video gaming might improve mental focus


Could playing video games for an hour actually boost your mental focus? A study by Chinese and U.S. researchers on a group of students who played the game League of Legends suggest the answer might be “yes.”

Participants were separated into two groups. The first were experts, who had played the multiplayer, real-time action game for at least two years and ranked in the top 7 percent of players. The second group had less than six months experience and ranked among the bottom 11 percent of the game’s players.

During the game, a square flashed quickly in the center of the screen and again at another area of the screen. Participants were asked to indicate where the second square was, in relation to the first, while scientists measured brain activity with EEGs.

The researchers measured “visual selective attention,” or the brain’s ability to focus on the task at hand while filtering out distractions or less relevant information.

In results published in the journal Frontiers of Neuroscience, the team found that before an hour of gaming, the experts performed significantly better than their nonexpert counterparts. Afterward, measurements for both groups improved. Between the two, brain activity and visual focus were comparable.

Although the findings showed a measurable increase in brain activity and improved focus in participants, the authors said their findings do not indicate how long these effects might last.

They stressed the need for more research in the area of visual attention as it is crucial to preventing sensory overload for the brain, which is constantly faced with an avalanche of visual information.

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