The brain is a control center in a human’s body. It controls how we feel, hear, see, think, and interact with other people or with things and situations. The brain changes significantly during whole life by the things we do while growing up, for example, when we are doing sports or reading books.
Doing some active and exciting things like sports, betting on sports, or playing video games, for example, trains our brain, and makes it more flexible. Moreover, such things make it “happier”. When we bet on our favourite sports or running a marathon ourselves, there is a hormone release, and our brain gets a lot of endorphins and serotonin. Bettors can choose from a wide range of sportsbooks and find a suitable one by exploring Colorado Sports Betting resources. Moreover, it’s possible to please the brain by getting free bonuses and promotions.
One of the things that are under control of the brain is playing video games, or esports. Like many other things, playing games can lead to some changes in the brain. We can start to think faster, learn better, and notice things better. The interesting fact here is that not all video games can provide people with positive changes in the brain.
Let’s discover how esports can affect our brain and change it.
Cognition
One of the functions of the brain is being responsible for cognition. Cognition means the way people understand and process information. It includes things like learning, paying attention, hearing, seeing, planning, making decisions, and remembering things.
As we learn and experience something new, our brain changes. It’s called brain plasticity. Plasticity allows the brain to create connections between certain brain regions while we’re learning. Our everyday activities also affect brain plasticity, for example, interactions with friends after work, hobbies, or daily morning routines. Playing video games is one of those things. Esports provide gamers with different kinds of activities that allow them to exercise various cognitive functions.
Impact of the Video Games on the Brain
According to scientific experiments using MRI and fMRI diagnostics, video games can change the brain in many different areas.
Playing some video games increases the volume and the activity in the brain’s parts. However, playing other games decreases the same activities. It can be due to the fact that at first playing a new game is more challenging, but later the gameplay can become automatic with less brain activity needed.
Esports is known to improve some cognitive aspects, including: the ability to multitask, the ability to remember where some objects are located or how to navigate to a certain location, the ability to pay attention to details, and working memory.
Complex of Effects on the Brain
How much playing games will affect the brain and cognition depends on several factors, like age, time spent gaming, and of course what kind of games were played. As it is said by scientists, video games can have more positive effects on the young brain than on older ones over the age of 65.
As for the amount of time spent playing games, it’s said in much research that the more people play games, the less positive impact they will gain. It’s better to divide gaming sessions into short parts and play no more than 1 hour each day. Moreover, long playing sessions can lead to problems with eyes and back.
It was mentioned above that all the video games’ impact doesn’t affect our brains equally. If a gamer plays only one game for a whole year, for example, he won’t get new cognitive connections and stop learning. It’s the same for playing traditional sports. Basketball and hockey require different skills. If you will play only basketball, you’ll certainly improve your arms, but you won’t make your legs stronger, which is essential for hockey. Balance is needed everywhere.
Researchers have found that action video games improve attention, perception, and spatial cognition more than other parts of the brain activities. Moreover, playing such games can help in the learning process. In games, there are templates of the world. It can be helpful in making predictions and assessing the current situation.
Such games as puzzle and strategic games like Starcraft 3 are known for problem-solving and activities that improve working memory. When gamers try to reach the next level or succeed in the particular quest, they need strategic thinking to use if they fail. Games offer safe plays to fail many times, so it’s easy to practice and try different ways of solving problems.
Closing Words
The effects of playing video games on the brain should be considered complex. Esports can impact our brain and cognition positively, but it depends on several factors, from what game you play to how much time you do it. So, it’s important to keep in mind that games affect our brain and a whole life and it’s up to us to choose how significant and positive this impact will be.
