“Pokemon player, developing specific brain regions?”

In the human brain, a mass of neurons that is only about the size of a pea is responsible for visual recognition of faces, words, numbers, locations, and colors. This part is also deeply involved in perceptions such as gender, race, and age. Researchers at UC Berkeley and Stanford University conducted research on whether visual stimuli from childhood were developing new brain regions. The subject of this study was a person who once enjoyed hard Pokemon.

This study suggests that visual stimulation can determine whether new areas of neurons are developed. But to confirm this, you need to show large amounts of images for a long time on topics that will develop new brains. One of the co-authors, Jesse Gomez, realized that her brain had gone through that process already in the 1990s, especially at a time of high learning ability in experience. That is the experience of playing the Pokémon series on Game Boy.

Hundreds of similar characters appear in the Pokémon series. Anyone who has done this hard should be able to immediately identify the character. The researchers believe that childhood experiences may have already developed new brain regions.

Another co-author, Kalanit Grill-Spector, was initially skeptical of the subject of the study because he wasn’t sure if one to two hours of play per day would affect the brain that way. Brain expressions, like speech expressions, are clearly learned at an early age, but this is because I thought that this stimulation comes from long-term daily experiences from children to adults.

But he corrected this skepticism for two reasons. First of all, when you look at the Pokémon screen of the Game Boy version, the character is really giving the child a unique yet consistent visual experience. Second, people who have played Pokemon since childhood show all kinds of images such as faces, animals, cartoons, bodies, horses, cars, corridors, etc. than those who do not. Showed a strong reaction.

Analysis of the data revealed that all Pokemon experiences have activated specific brain regions located behind the ears. It can be confusing to the public, but the authors say this is a reaction to the theory of eccentricity bias.

The findings show that our brains can develop special brain regions for object recognition than we thought. Our abilities are limited by how much experience we have in childhood, without being limited by the brain itself. Say it might be. In addition, most of the Pokemon players who investigated the question of whether games adversely affect children’s brains said that they obtained a doctorate in science or were working for a large company such as Google. He added that there was no evidence that he was crazy. Related information can be found here .