Abstract
BackgroundOnline gaming is a complex and competitive activity. However, little attention has been paid to brain activities relating to gaming proficiency.MethodsIn the current study, fMRI data were obtained from 70 subjects while they were playing online games. Based on their playing, we selected 24 clips from each subject for three levels of gaming proficiency (good, poor, and average), with each clip lasting for 8 seconds.ResultsWhen comparing the brain responses during the three conditions, good‐play trials, relative to poor‐ or average‐play trials, were associated with greater activation of the declive, postcentral gyrus, and striatum. In post‐hoc analyses taking the identified clusters as regions of interest to calculate their functional connectivity, activation of the declive during good‐play conditions was associated with that in the precentral gyrus and thalamus, and activation in the striatum was associated with that in the inferior frontal gyrus and middle frontal cortex.ConclusionsTaken together, findings suggest specific regional brain activations and functional connectivity patterns involving brain regions and circuits involved in sensory, motor, automatic and executive functioning and their coordination are associated with better gaming. Specifically, for basic functions, such as simple reaction, motor control, and motor coordination, people need to perform them automatically; for highly cognitive functions, such as plan and strategic playing, people need to engage more executive functions in finishing these works. The automatically processed basic functions spare cognitive resources for the highly cognitive functions, which facilitates their gaming behaviors.
Highlights
Online gaming has become an important recreational activity
Competitive gaming often requires that players monitor fast-paced and concurrent visual and auditory stimuli, using proper strategies to react quickly to competitors and their behaviors, and in doing so, individuals playing competitive games often need to react rapidly and switch flexibly between tasks while holding information in working memory (Bejjanki et al, 2014; Richlan, Schubert, Mayer, Hutzler, & Kronbichler, 2018; Wang, Zhu, Qi, Huang, & Li, 2017; West et al, 2015). This process requires the involvement of brain regions involved in multiple processing domains (Katsyri, Hari, Ravaja, & Nummenmaa, 2013; Stockdale, Morrison, Palumbo, Garbarino, & Silton, 2017)
Based on the contrast of good versus poor conditions, we selected three significant clusters as the regions of interest (ROI) for further connectivity analyses: the declive of the cerebellum, the striatum, and the precentral gyrus
Summary
Online gaming has become an important recreational activity. It is estimated that teenagers spend an average of 31 hr per-week online, mostly playing online games (McGonigal, 2011a,b). Competitive online gaming often requires players to coordinate sensory and motor control to accomplish their tasks and win against competitors (Anderson, Bothell, Fincham, & Moon, 2016; Sohn, Lee, Kwak, Yoon, & Kwon, 2017) Brain regions, such as the cerebellum (involved in processing automatic or highly learned motoric behaviors and coordinating control), the thalamus (a neurocircuitry hub coordinating auditory, visual, and somatosensory functions), and the brain stem (with ascending and descending pathways involved in sensory and motoric processes), have been implicated in sensory and motor processes and their coordination (Katsyri et al, 2013; Koepp et al, 1998). We hypothesized that good gaming (as compared to poor gaming) would involve greater striatal activation
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