Abstract
Background: Video gaming is an increasingly popular activity in contemporary society, especially among young people, and video games are increasing in popularity not only as a research tool but also as a field of study. Many studies have focused on the neural and behavioral effects of video games, providing a great deal of video game derived brain correlates in recent decades. There is a great amount of information, obtained through a myriad of methods, providing neural correlates of video games.Objectives: We aim to understand the relationship between the use of video games and their neural correlates, taking into account the whole variety of cognitive factors that they encompass.Methods: A systematic review was conducted using standardized search operators that included the presence of video games and neuro-imaging techniques or references to structural or functional brain changes. Separate categories were made for studies featuring Internet Gaming Disorder and studies focused on the violent content of video games.Results: A total of 116 articles were considered for the final selection. One hundred provided functional data and 22 measured structural brain changes. One-third of the studies covered video game addiction, and 14% focused on video game related violence.Conclusions: Despite the innate heterogeneity of the field of study, it has been possible to establish a series of links between the neural and cognitive aspects, particularly regarding attention, cognitive control, visuospatial skills, cognitive workload, and reward processing. However, many aspects could be improved. The lack of standardization in the different aspects of video game related research, such as the participants' characteristics, the features of each video game genre and the diverse study goals could contribute to discrepancies in many related studies.
Highlights
Nowadays, video gaming is a highly popular and prevalent entertainment option, its use is no longer limited to children and adolescents
The main reasons for exclusion were: being a review article (n = 22), absence of neural correlates (n = 70), presence of pathology in the participants (n = 65), not being related to video games (VGs) or using simple computerized tasks which could not be considered VGs (n = 69), testing of new technologies in which the brain correlates were a mere by-product (n = 25), articles focused on motor functions (n = 15), pharmacological studies (n = 2), and articles in languages other than English, Spanish, or French (n = 18)
The current work has allowed us to integrate the great deal of data that has been generated during recent years about a topic that has not stopped growing, making it easier to compare the results of multiple research groups
Summary
Video gaming is a highly popular and prevalent entertainment option, its use is no longer limited to children and adolescents. The increasing ubiquity of digital technologies, such as smart-phones and tablet computers, has exposed most of the population to entertainment software in the form of casual video games (VGs) or gamified applications. An important segment of society, over 30% in tablet computers and 70% in smart phones, has been exposed to these technologies and can be considered in some form, casual gamers (Casual Games Association, 2013). Video gaming is an increasingly popular activity in contemporary society, especially among young people, and video games are increasing in popularity as a research tool and as a field of study. Many studies have focused on the neural and behavioral effects of video games, providing a great deal of video game derived brain correlates in recent decades. There is a great amount of information, obtained through a myriad of methods, providing neural correlates of video games
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