Videogames challenge us to fix problems, and becoming addicted to them could help to make people smarter and even treat various conditions like depression and poor memory if they are designed to affect the parts of the brain that govern those conditions.
This is according to the Times of India, which ran a story recently about how neuroscientists are studying the ways in which videogames affect gamers’ brains.
Apparently, researchers at the University of California in San Francisco are scanning gamers’ brains with neuroimaging techniques while they play to see which parts of the brain light up. Right now that’s being done to discover the “addiction point” in games that keeps people playing; the idea is to use the data to one day create games that adjust to the gamer’s performance in order to keep them right on the addiction threshold.
The Times of India article reports that researchers say that from that point, “the possibilities seem limitless. One day, we might develop games to treat depression or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Or games that rewire our brains to improve memory and cognitive function.”
That means games of the future could be specifically designed to target your brain in useful, interesting and above all beneficial ways, and constant gaming could some day not be a sign of depression or a desire to escape reality, but that the gamer is bettering him or herself in tangible, positive ways.
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