New Scientist reports on a new study of brain activity and video game violence. Excerpt:
Klaus Mathiak at the University of Aachen in Germany set out to discover what is happening in gamers' brains as they encounter violent situations. [...]
He found that as violence became imminent, the cognitive parts of the brain became more active. And during a fight, emotional parts of the brain, such as the amygdala and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex, were shut down. This pattern is the same as that seen in subjects who have had brain scans during other simulated violent situations such as imagining an aggressive encounter. It is impossible to scan people's brains during acts of real aggression so Mathiak argues that this is as close as you can get to the real thing. It suggests that video games are a "training for the brain to react with this pattern," he says.
Niels Birbaumer of the University of Tübingen in Germany speculates that playing violent video games regularly would strengthen these circuits in the brain. A regular player confronted with a similar real-life situation, might be more primed for aggression, Birbaumer says.
Link: New Scientist News - Do games prime brain for violence?.
This appears to support arguments that Dave Grossman has been making for several years -- see his classic book On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society and more at his website Killology.
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