by Robert Harden

Created on: February 19, 2009

Video games can absolutely increase the raw brain power of individuals who play them regularly for a number of reasons, as well as affecting, in a generally positive way, the relationship between our bodies and our minds.

First and foremost, video games are becoming tremendously complex. Simply to compare to a game like pong, a current game like Civilization IV has a very steep learning curve and requires an enormous amount of knowledge and strategy to play well. The sheer amount of possible moves and permutations make chess look like Tic-Tac-Toe. Other games of this type include the Sims series, particularly Sim City, as well as the increasingly complex nature of RPGs. In World of Warcraft, to give another example, the player's field of vision is chock full of the countless moves, spells, abilities, and items that are available for use and the player must know what all of them do and in what situations, against what enemies, etc. This is in addition to coordinating the character's particular niche with a possibly very large adventuring party as well as keeping track of numerous and involved quests. The nature of these games represents a revolution in the complexity that our minds are capable of dealing with, and all signs point to this only increasing with time and the development of better technologies.

Secondly, video games increase the speed of thought. Prior to the development of video games increasing mental quickness was primarily associated with language learning. When learning to speak a new language a person must quickly recall and put together a large amount of previously learned information in order to make something new. Video games force our minds to do exactly the same thing. Not only do they have a very large number of possible choices but frequently require split second decisions on what choices to make, forcing our minds to adapt to a quicker pace than is experienced in everyday life. This allows the mind to learn and process information better and faster.

While complex forms of entertainment have always been available, the difference between previous ones such as table top role playing games is that video games hook the mind to a reward system and keep the player interested and entirely focused on what is essentially a mental boot camp. They do not get boring in the same way that other activities do. The dark side of this is of course video game addiction but by working our brains frequently for extended periods of time they only become more powerful. Video games enrich our environments in ways that previous generations could only have dreamed of. It ties into a study that was performed by Marian Diamond in which one group of rats were put into dull, empty cages while another was put into a cage full of interactive toys, bright colors, and other things for the mice to do. The researchers actually discovered, as a result of the large amount of mental stimulation, that the rats given all of the toys had actually grown new brain cells, a process called neurogenesis. It even happened in adults, something that was thought impossible until recently, and the rats in the stimulating environment even lived considerably longer than average.

Video games work in exactly the same way and are coming at a time where many different technologies are converging to create a more complex world. And so far, our minds have proven themselves to be uniquely fitted to adapting to these changes and becoming more capable as a result.

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