Video Games Activate Reward Regions Of Brain In Men More Than Women--so says a new study reported in Science Daily. 11 males and 11 females played a simple video game that was designed especially for the experiment. The game was a kind of space invaders type of game where balls keep coming from the right and you have to click on them (destroying them) before they hit a wall. If you are successful the wall (a vertical line) moves to the right and you "gain territory."
Participants were imaged using fMRI. Based on the Science Daily report, men and women performed similarly on the game but the men showed more activation in the nucleus accumbens, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex. The authors interpreted this as showing that the men found gaining territory "more rewarding."
Hard to know what to make of this one until I read the original paper. There are some questions not answered by the Science Daily synopsis. Were the participants gamers or non-gamers, for example? That would make a difference ...
P.S. Jing's study is quoted in the "Related stories" column at right on the Science Daily page.
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3 comments:
This is an interesting study and the results make intuitive sense. However, I also feel that some questions are not completely answered by this ScienceDaily report. It would be nice to read the original research article. I particularly have some issues with the only-experiment-group test (no control group according to this report). If there is only one game, which is claimed to be the territory type, it is hard to know if this component is playing a significant role. It could be very neat if the researchers also scanned participants while playing another non-territory type of game and showed equal rewarding effect on both men and women.
One question that came to mind when reading the ScienceDaily report was: what does 'gaining territory' within the video game context mean? It seems plausible that there is more to it than just 'gaining territory, or ground' in the sense that 'gaining ground' doesn't only equate to gaining more tangible space within a constructed environment. I agree with Jing about how it is hard to tell with only one experimental condition if the component of 'territory type' is actually relevant.
The other thought that passed through my mind was if there could plausibly be findings that point to greater reward centre activation in females while playing games in which ones goal is to acquire 'status'(like in the sims or something)? But again, 'gaining status' could mean a variety of things also thus requiring a more rigorous experimental design...
It would be interesting to see the difference a control group would make, and it would also be interesting to see how things would change if the researchers did frame the goal of the game as territorial from the start (perhaps in a sneaky way)...
First of all, I would say it's an interesting finding. Their result showed an increased brain activity for males during the game playing, while it could be the case that males tend to think more than females that the game is related with territory gaining. I agree with Janise that we may also be able to find a game, that girls will feel more rewarded for achieving a higher score in the game (e.g., dance game?)
I think it's a clever way to investigate gender difference using fMRI, however, I am more interested in the gender difference at more low-level brain areas. And I think that's what we are doing in our labs.
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