In the recent years children are seen to be more aggressive. Here is an article showing  that  the number of hours of exposure to violent video games both in children and adults  has  its effect on  their behavior.

Team@CMHF

Men who can’t pry their fingers off the controllers when it comes to shoot-em-up video games may have changes in areas of the brain associated with emotional and cognitive function, researchers said here.

In a small fMRI study, men who took aim at video game characters for about 10 hours during one week had diminished activity in areas of the brain associated with control of aggressive behavior.

“We found that gamers showed reduced activity in areas of the brain involved in attention, inhibition, and decision makingThough researchers have long questioned whether violent video games can change brain structure, there’s limited evidence as to whether gaming has any long-term neurological effects.

In the new study, they sought to investigate the impact of longer exposures. Mathews and colleagues recruited 22 men, age 18 to 29. All of the volunteers said they had little prior exposure to violent video games.

Half of the men were told to play a shooting video game for 10 hours at home for one week, followed by a week of abstinence from video games. The other men refrained from any video-gaming during the two week study.

All had an fMRI at baseline, and again after the first and second weeks. During the scans, they completed an emotional interference task and a cognitive inhibition counting task to assess activity in regions important for controlling emotion and aggressive behavior, Mathews explained.

The scans conducted after game exposure revealed diminished activity in the left inferior frontal lobe during the emotional task and less activation in the anterior cingulate cortex during the inhibition task compared with controls, as well as with their own baseline scans.

Mathews noted those regions are important for controlling emotional and aggressive behavior.

By the end of the second week, after the men had been off violent video games for seven days, the researchers found that they regained more prefrontal activation — a sign that quitting video game play could modify any effects on changed brain activity.

Still, Mathews warned that the findings only extend over a week — “we don’t know the effects of years and years of gaming.”

He said one of the next steps would be to investigate whether pro-social games — essentially, the antithesis of shoot-em-up gaming, where gamers are involved in constructive activities — may mitigate the effects that violent games have on brain activity.

“There have been a lot of studies that expose patients to novel behaviors, and you see changes in brain activity that then go away over time,” Lipton told y. “The problem is, how does that translate into real world functionality?”

Ref: http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/RSNA/29916?utm_source=WC&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Meeting_Roundup_RSNA