In an earlier post I talked about how I hope to leverage these next few weeks to try to analyze why I’ve personally shied away from video games for so long. I’ve continue to play both Monaco and Plants vs. Zombies and, while I’ve really enjoyed both of those experiences, I haven’t found myself just clinging to jump back in. I’ve read a lot of facts over they years about the stereotypical gamer: male and 25-35 years old and that’s intriguing in and of itself but, given that I am a male between 25-35 years old, is there a stereotype of the non-gamer?
My initial hypothesis was that certainly something neurologically has to be happen in gamer that isn’t necessarily happening in a non-gamer. And, after reading a few articles, it turns out that’s somewhat true. There has been some research over the last few years that has helped unpack what is happening in the brain when one plays video games:
In all subjects, game play activated a large number of brain regions, including those associated with visual processing, visuospatial attention, motor function, and sensorimotor integration. While these are not surprising results for this task, what was interesting was that key regions of the medial forebrain pleasure circuit were also activated, including the nucleus accumbens, as well as the amygdala, and the orbitofrontal cortex. While both men and women showed activation in these regions during game trials, the effect was significantly stronger in men. – Psychology Today
So this is a good start. Something is firing regardless of who you are, what sex you are, or to what level of gamer you are. The Psychology Today post also points to winning money having a similar effect on the region. Living in Oklahoma one is exposed to many Indian casinos and I’ve always wondered the same thing. What can possibly be thrilling about playing slot machines? It requires zero skill whatsoever to push a button that takes your money. There has to be something differently going on in other people’s heads to make that appealing. The dopamine rush is coupled with the lights and sounds apparently produce an experience that is incredibly enjoyable for many. So why don’t I get that feeling when I pull the lever?
One phrase that struck out to me in the article above was “pleasure circuit.” That sounded intriguing. What I found via Wikipedia is that its usually referred to as the pleasure center and extensive research has been done on it across various “inputs” such as substance abuses, stress, and sexual pleasure. And, as luck would have it, there’s some recent research that points right to this idea of gamers vs. non-gamers. A 2011 on German 14 year olds produced this:
The researchers found frequent game players had a greater volume of left striatal grey matter than irregular gamers. What it may be telling us is that there are individual differences in people’s brains that render them more or less likely to be heavy video game players. – Murat Yücel, Professor and Clinical Neuropsychologist at University of Melbourne
Another interesting point that Dr. Yucel brought up was that there isn’t necessarily a “video game region.” The desire for rewards that generate dopamine can be fed through several types of activities such as eating, gambling, and social activities.
What’s helpful to takeaway from this, particularly from an education perspective, is that 1.) if people are properly motivated, you can unlock a very powerful region of the brain and 2.) video games are seriously doing this well for a large, select demographic.
There’s this narrative that gets passed around quite a bit (I’ve seen it in one of our books so far) and it goes something like this: kids find video games incredibly rewarding. Ergo since video games are vastly more rewarding and experiential than school, why would they NOT find school boring.
I think that’s an okay statement, but it can be extrapolated so much further. I would slightly tweak the narrative to say something like this: access to activities that fulfill a specific powerful desire is easier than ever before. That may be in video games, social engagement through activities like social media, or access to certain foods that trigger heavy doses of dopamine. We can leverage our knowledge of how people are motivated to design learning experiences (plural is important) which tap into that. Now, keep in mind, it’s going to be different for different people but that’s ok! The research shows that. Rather than try to force everyone through a single motivation system (say–standardized testing), we need to expand the ways in which students can effectively prove that they’ve met the learning objective and allow them to come to a similar endpoint from multiple directions.
So that’s where I’m at right now. I also learned that brains are pretty plastic and are willing to change over time. Feel free to try to influence it!